


Some Things So Precious

by TigerDragon



Series: Prerogative of the Brave [6]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always-a-girl!Erik, Canon-Typical Violence, Historical References, Multi, Novel, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 74,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1946106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1973. George Foreman becomes heavyweight champion of the world, the last American combat soldier leaves Vietnam, Skylab is launched and the World Trade Center opened, a president of the United States is embroiled in a scandal that will lead to his impeachment and the American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Oscar de la Hoya, Rachel Maddow and Ichiro Suzuki are born. J.R.R Tokien, Pearl S. Buck, and Lyndon Baines Johnson die.</p><p>Emma Frost starts teaching Ethics at the Xavier School for the Gifted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back to _Prerogative of the Brave_ , ladies and gentlemen. It's been a bit less than three years since our first novel in this series, and we're glad you've enjoyed the four short stories we've posted in the universe since. As we started teasing in the comments on _The Lesson_ back in May, we always intended to add a second novel to this series set ten years after the first. 
> 
> And, much love and labor later, here it is. Please keep your hands and arms inside the not-our-intellectual-property car, hold on to your hats and enjoy the ride.

“If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Address at Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, 1955

* * *

 

**Brooklyn: June 4, 1973**

The Gridskipper was not a fine drinking establishment. It was not even a tidy neighborhood pub, as much as its regulars might like to imagine it to be so. It was, in every sense of the word, a dive. Men in ill-fitting suits and women in too much make-up mingled next to a bar so poorly finished it snagged glasses on its splinters - as much to avoid the rotting cushions in the booths, the woman nursing a lousy bourbon thought, as to eye each other up for a potential fumble in some unspeakable motel or other up the street.

Assuming they made it to a motel at all. She’d passed one or two couples moving frantically in dark alleys on her way here.

In any event, it suited her purposes perfectly. Letting the noise of the other patrons’ minds wash over her, she heard any number of thoughts that justified a satisfying contempt. She estimated that she’d have grounds for a simmering hatred within half an hour.

Savoring her superiority, if not her drink, Emma waited. She refused to let herself feel the events of the day--not the astonishing eruption of Consuelo’s mutant gift in the middle of class, not the subsequent waves panicked students, faculty and parents, not the looks on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez as they ushered their daughter away from the school. Emma spoke no Spanish, but the images in their minds made her fairly certain that the girl could expect to be locked away in a Puerto Rican convent--assuming they were willing to take an ‘abominación’ like Consuelo.

Some nights, she was downright glad that the scum of humanity was so easy to find.

One of the men at the bar finally worked up the nerve to talk to the striking blond in the black wrap dress, and she let him get out a few words of introduction while she had a good look at how he felt about ‘those damn mutants.’ The image in his mind would have been comical if it weren’t so fucking tragic - a sort of green, scaly creature with slavering jaws and an absurdly oversized cock stuffed down the front of its ragged pants. _He probably thinks we want to take his woman back to Mars on a rocketship, not that she wouldn’t be better off if we did._ Emma smiled at the thought, and the idiot actually seemed to take it as encouragement.

When he put his hand on her thigh, the hot kettle of rage in her chest finally came to a pleasantly explosive boil.

Her perfectly made-up lips curved up in something that would definitely not be mistaken for a smile just before she buried her fist in the man’s groin. At his groan, his buddies jerked their heads up, alarm and revenge tinging their minds red. She let them crowd up around her before she turned hard and glittering and untouchable.

It went on for quite a while after that, but that was all right. Their noise - mental and otherwise - was as pleasantly distant as the cold fire inside her, a world separated from her by unyielding glass. They broke bottles, hands and chairs against her as uselessly as words or the hammer of their emotional filth, and she watched the hot flare of their panic as a few of them had the sense to run for the door. She let them - there was more than enough wood and flesh and bone to spend her fury on, and when she finally came to rest against the bar again, the harsh glitter of her diamond hands was almost invisible under the thick layer of blood.

She was fairly certain she hadn’t killed anyone. She was less certain she cared.

The barkeep was frozen in a crouch just beneath her. His grip was completely yielding when she plucked the towel from his fingers and his eyes blank as he watched her meticulously wipe her hands clean. Inspecting her dress, she tsked to herself at the ragged tear in the side of the skirt. The stains weren’t a problem--she’d worn black for a reason--but the tear would send the garment to the secondhand store.

Tossing the bloodied towel to the floor, she picked her way over broken glass and groaning bodies, swung her jacket over her shoulders, and left. Her legs and face caught the orange glow of the streetlights as she walked, but she wasn’t quite ready to return to flesh.

A flat, metallic voice spoke from the shadows above the street - something between dry amusement and a mechanical growl. “Did you make a clean sweep, Miss Frost?”

A dull echo of surprise flickered across the surface of her mind without quite touching her, and she turned with the sleek efficiency of a particularly well-dressed automaton to search the rooftop behind her for the source of that voice. If they knew her name, then she’d have to return herself to flesh and bone long enough to dig deep in their mind and take every bit of that knowledge away from them before she...

The second wave of shock was violent enough to be felt even through the cold stillness of diamond.

There were a lot of urban myths in the mutant community, such as it was and for what it was worth: tall tales and bogeymen aplenty, secret government capture projects and wild theories about everyone from the Greek gods to JFK having secretly been a mutant. The first time she’d heard about Magneto, she’d assumed he had to be one of those - just mutants trying to make themselves feel better about their sorry fucking lot in life by inventing a mysterious avenger who thrashed vigilante crowds and punished aggressive cops. Even the occasional newspaper story speculating on the existence of such an individual - terrorist, they usually said - seemed more like a ploy to sell papers than something that might actually exist. If there was any truth behind it, she’d told one of her handful of mutant acquaintances over a glass of wine - they could hardly really be called friends, when the occasional wine and beer meeting was the extent of their time together - then it was almost certainly the case that ‘Magneto’ was actually a shared name being used by some ragged young bunch of mutant punks who thought blaming their reprisals on a mysterious man in a cape would keep the police from tracking them down and locking them up.

“Nobody,” she had said with a savage sneer, “flies around in a cape and a metal helmet saving people from their own stupidity.”

It was only the grace afforded by her upbringing that allowed her to admit that it was a very striking nobody hovering over the sidewalk not ten feet from where she stood - cape, helmet and all.  If an enveloping cloak of a light-drinking black material more like a metallic mesh than cloth could be called a cape and a gargoyle's helm of black metal and blood red accents could be called something as absurd and reductive as a helmet. She wondered absently if, had she been flesh and prey to the more visceral rushes of her unmuted emotions, she might have embarrassed herself by trembling.

She rather hoped not.

“As clean as can be expected in this part of town, Magneto.” Nodding wryly to their dingy surroundings, Emma stood perfectly still, refusing to even shift her weight in front of the legend. She would show no fear, no sign of unease.  “To what do I owe our meeting?”

“One hundred and thirteen injuries, three deaths and a very large police file. You’ve made quite a name for yourself, Miss Frost - or would have, if you weren’t wiping down memories as you went. As it is, the police are half-convinced there’s a diamond woman running loose on the streets and desperately trying to convince themselves the local gangs are selling a particularly poor variety of pharmaceutical recreation these days.” The invisible eyes behind the reflective, T-slit visor watching her tangibly shifted, examining something else before returning the weight of their attention to her. “Does it make you feel better?”

Even through the structure of hard crystal, cold anger flared. “I hardly need to justify myself to you. How did your last fight with the police go?” If she’d been talking to a human--or any of the other mutants she knew--that would have been the point at which she started walking again. However, despite her good show, she couldn’t quite bring herself to turn her back on Magneto. She settled for glaring at his helmet instead.

“More messily than I would have preferred, but they left with their lives and half the vehicles they came in. More to the point, the protesters they were planning to beat on the way to jail went home with nothing worse than a few scrapes and bruises.” The subtle tilt of his head, which was probably meant to be inquisitive, moved the helmet in a manner reminiscent of a hawk contemplating its potential meal. “I don’t recall asking you to justify yourself - only if it made you feel better. Happier. More fulfilled.”

With her mouth open around a rejoinder, Emma paused. For a painfully long moment she found herself, infuriatingly, unable to lie and unwilling to admit to the deep, pervasive dissatisfaction that seemed to define her life lately. Instead, she tried to draw more from the interloper.

“I suppose you’re smiling and content under that helmet, then?”

The smooth fall of the cloak rippled slightly, and she caught a glimpse of a gauntlet of mesh and metal plate that reminded her irresistibly of a hawk’s talons. The gauntlet opened, palm upward, in a gesture that she realized with a start must be the echo of a shrug. “My actions, even when they cause pain, serve a purpose - a structure greater than the simple punishment of bad or inadequate men who look no higher than their own prejudices and comfort. I want a better future for mutantkind, Miss Frost, and every drop of blood I have shed in the last decade has been to that end. Can you say the same? Are you weeding out individuals who target mutants and harm them, who have a clear and present intent to make the world a more dangerous and less welcoming place for our people, or are you simply lashing out at bigots and simpletons for no higher reason than that they infuriate you?”

The question struck Emma deeper than any physical blow ever had. It shattered her calm, diamond melting to flesh, and she took a shaky breath around the knot in her chest and the sting behind her eyes. “Why shed light on my vices tonight?” Her voice was strained but her eyes stayed dry. She would not cry. “I imagine the great, purposeful Magneto has better things to do.”

He ignored the barb as casually as if it had slid off the armor she suspected probably lay under the cloak, and she could feel the weight of his eyes on hers as he let the momentary silence lend emphasis to the quiet of his voice. “I have a task and a purpose for you, Emma Frost, and in my experience a fair inventory of the present is a good beginning for a consideration of the future. There is a school upstate - in Westchester - which is presently looking for teachers. The man who funds it, Charles Xavier, and the school itself are of considerable importance. You might make yourself useful there, if useful is something you wish to be.”

Jaw set, she blinked rapidly, trying to cover her surprise. She’d been half-expecting him to propose a task or mission--everybody wants something--but teaching at a posh boarding school was about the last thing to cross her mind.  

“I...see.” She gave the menacing figure a flat look. “A school. It does make me wonder...” Shaking her head, she cut herself off, offering Magneto a polite nod. “Well. I must be going. Good evening to you, sir.”

His point made and the offer on the table, he gave her the courtesy of not belaboring the issue.

“Good evening, Miss Frost. I would suggest you take Broad Street - the police may take their time coming to this neighborhood, but they will be along presently.”

She gave a single wave to the cloaked figure before turning to go. Walking as steadily as she could, mouth tightened into a terse smile, Emma had to discipline herself to take his advice. A large part of her rebelled at letting him dictate her movements, but getting arrested would be more than a little inconvenient.

When she turned the corner and glanced back, he had vanished into the sky like a ghost. It made her want to stamp her foot in frustration, no matter how petulant the gesture might have been, and she set her teeth together as she resolutely began reviewing her lesson plan for the next day’s classes. It might not have been much of a school, but St. Paul’s School for Girls was her employer and - summer school or not, poor and black and Latino or not - the students she would see tomorrow were still hers. She certainly wasn’t going to abandon them for a high-rent preparatory academy like the one her parents had subjected _her_ to, no matter what a man in a practically medieval suit of armor had to say about it ... was she?

Certainly not.

 


	2. Part One - Faculty and Staff

**Westchester : August 25, 1973**

Staring up at the imposing facade of the Xavier mansion through her fashionable sunglasses, Emma sighed to herself. It had been several years since she’d subjected herself to the endless tedium of New York’s elite, and she wasn’t looking forward to having to smile blandly through tennis matches, grand dinners, regattas, and garden parties. She was even less happy at the thought of seeing another generation of old money run through the archaic old-boy’s-club indoctrination they called an education. Only the thought of adding a little socialist philosophy and gender theory to the mix made her believe that her mission would be anything less than completely painful.

As the cabbie unloaded her trunks, her welcoming committee arrived through a gap in the hedges - a young man with soft brown hair, expensive slacks and a silk shirt that was exactly rumpled enough to suggest he felt relaxed in it. He wasn’t quite unattractive enough to keep up with the scions of industry she’d grown up with - more square-jawed masculinity and less double chin, for one thing - but he made up for it with a pair of ruby sunglasses that looked as if they were his single attempt at hipster fashion in the last decade. He compounded the first impression by offering her his hand and an annoyingly friendly smile that was just awkward enough to look authentic. “Miss Frost, right? Your letter of reference wasn’t too specific on personal details, but I don’t think we’re expecting anyone else from the city today, so I guess you’re probably actually Miss Frost. Smooth ride?”

Giving his hand a perfunctory shake, she nodded cooly. “Uneventful.”  Brushing his mind with an invisible, feather-light touch, she raised an elegant eyebrow in question. “And you are...?”  

“Scott Summers. Math and science teacher, occasional handyman.” His smile didn’t flicker, but her mind came up against a smooth, patterned wall like a sphere of steel around his thoughts. “Welcome to the Xavier School for the Gifted. How about I help you with your bags, and then I can give you a tour of the place?”

“Thank you,” she said smoothly, covering her surprise at his mental shielding--a skill she had seen in very few people indeed, and never this polished. Darting a glance at Summers as he easily hefted a trunk, she abstractly noted the way the silk pulled taut over his shoulders, then turned to lift one of the smaller bags and strode forward.

As they settled her into her new rooms, Summers was willing enough to answer questions about his place at the school, the names and subjects of the other teachers, the number of students, and other mundane details. It was not a large school, especially for the size of the old mansion that seemed to house it - barely twenty pupils, though from the way Summers shrugged at the number she suspected it was probably not likely to be very firm. Either their enrollment fluctuated rather more than she would have expected, or there was something very strange going on. The building itself was another surprise - most of the classrooms seemed to have been converted from more domestic purposes, with the occasional expedient of knocking down a wall or two. Combined with the mingling of modern electronics, historical artifacts, high society showpieces and teenage debris that constituted what might laughingly be called the decor of the main floor, the result was very much like a bewildering meeting between a very expensive college dorm and a museum.

Then he walked her out through the kitchen (barely cleaned) to the green expanse of the grounds behind the house, and she got her first look at the school’s athletic facilities. Full-sized tennis courts, a basketball court, a pool house, a stable... it looked as if Xavier had tried to cram every known form of recreation onto the wide field and gardens behind the house, with a fine disregard for anything as mundane as aesthetic order. It was an appalling, glorious riot, and she had a sneaking suspicion that Summers was enjoying her confusion.

“I confess that the campus is rather more unconventional than I expected, Mr. Summers.” With a smooth motion she turned on her elegant boots to face her guide. “I trust the students enjoy the variety of activities available?”

“We like to think so.” He crooked a smile at her that was just a little too amused to be entirely pleasure at the thought of the young people having a good time. “Of course, the campus favorite is baseball, but Professor Xavier doesn’t think we play by the rules enough to warrant a diamond. Some of our students get a little... creative about the game.”

She was saved from having to respond to that bit of cryptic nonsense with something intelligent by an outraged shout from the gardens, and a sudden crashing in the rose bushes. “Proudstar,” a girl’s voice with a rough Chicago accent roared, “I am going to kick your damn ass if you don’t get back here with my smokes!”

An enormous, dark-haired blur came barreling out of the hedge, tumbled down the path, and regained his footing several yards down. “You have to catch me first, Jo-jo!” he crowed.

Another figure, only slightly shorter than the first and still towering over the telepath, shot out across the grounds at a sprint. _I’m gonna kill him,_ her mind raged, _I’m gonna fucking kill his Indian ass, I don’t care how fine it is._

Emma bit back a laugh. “Spirited, aren’t they?”

Her chuckle died in astonishment as the the young woman - black, now that she got half a look at her, and wearing a jeans-and-jacket rig that would have been right at home in the rough parts of Brooklyn - overhauled the boy in a blur of motion and tackled him to the pavement hard enough to star the concrete with cracks. They tumbled together for a minute, like lovers or kids in a schoolyard but moving faster than her eyes could follow - and when they finally stilled enough for her to make out more than a blur the girl had Proudstar pinned by the wrist and was giving him a grin that would have made a shark proud. “You think you’re gonna Bogart my smokes and get away with it, buffalo boy? I’m gonna make you pay for it so hard you’re gonna walk funny for days, you get me?”

“Ahem,” said Summers.

The pair on the ground looked over the girl’s shoulder with the same motion, faces wearing almost the same expression of surprise, and then gave voice to exactly the same thought with a maximum of economy. “Shit.”

Scott sighed.

Emma rounded on him coldly. “Mr. Summers.” Her voice seemed to lower the ambient temperature. “It is apparent that you have omitted a number of relevant details in your descriptions of the students and,” she raked her eyes over him caustically, “I assume, the other faculty.” From the corner of her eye she could see the students darting evaluating glances between her and Summers, their thoughts loudly hoping for a chance to escape.

She crossed her arms and glared imperiously. “Well?”

Scott’s lips twitched slightly, and he shrugged with a degree of composure that was either the best act she’d ever seen or that of a genuinely unconcerned man. “Nothing you didn’t leave off your own application, Miss Frost - though we’ll be glad to have another telepath around, it’ll give us someone to cover for Jean when she’s gone. I thought we might make it all the way to dinner before we had to play ‘what can you do,’ but if you really want the whole list now... ” he raised his voice without turning his head, “don’t even think about it, you two. You run, you’re pulling clean-up in the kitchen for a week. Why don’t you brush yourselves off and meet our new Composition and Ethics instructor?”

Mind racing, Emma continued to glare at Summers. “Objectively, I can’t say I blame you for making sure you knew about me before you revealed yourselves to me,” she ground out. “Objectively.” She deliberately said nothing about any other viewpoint she might have.

“Miss Frost, you are a model of rationality and restraint.” Summers gave her a particularly infuriating smile. “In honor of which, may I introduce you to Joanna Cargill and John Proudstar, two young people who could very much benefit from your example of composure and forgiveness. John,” he added mildly, again without turning around, “stop staring at Miss Frost before Joanna starts trying to injure you again. You remember what happened with the support beams, don’t you?”

If a cough could sound chagrined, John managed it, turning his head down to stare at his feet. The young woman--Joanna--let him off with a single blow of her elbow to his ribs.

“Hello, Miss Frost,” she said, a brilliant and completely untutored smile transforming her face from belligerent to rather pretty. _Focus, focus, mind opaque like a curtain, going to kill that idiot boy NO! calm, serenity, damn I hope she’s not as strong as the others I hate having to think quietly...._

Emma took her hand, her first genuine smile curving her lips. “Hello, Joanna.” _I’ll show you how to shield, if you like._

“That would be f....” Joanna stopped in mid-sentence, her broad hand wrapping around Emma’s very firmly for a moment before she remembered to relax her grip, and then she very carefully formed the words in her mind with the deliberate effort of someone who’d spent more than a little time around telepaths. _Thank you, Miss Frost. That would be cool. Don’t worry about Mister Summers - he’s always a tight-ass._

For the first time on campus--in fact, for the first time in weeks--Emma laughed. Perhaps her time here wouldn’t be a feat of endurance after all.

* * *

 

Dinner was in one of the most typically old-money dining rooms Emma had seen: oak-paneled walls and ceiling, chandelier, stuffy portraits of Xaviers past, heirloom table and chairs, and the odd classical sculpture in the corner. If appearances had been anything to go by, she would have been in for a crushingly boring evening. It was not, as it turned out, nearly as bad as the decor might have suggested. The table chatter was loose and lively, if not exactly witty, and the food was plain and enjoyable. Even Summers seemed to loosen up, once a slender black woman named Heather - young, but well-dressed and with a fiercely intelligent glow about her mind - turned up unannounced. It was not, however, without its frustrations. Given the number of closed minds in the room and the frantic pace of conversation, it took her half the dinner to figure out that ‘Heather’ was Heather _Xavier_ , and that she was practically Summers’ sister.

With a wry smile, she turned to the shy young man seated next to her. Heather’s relationship to the Xaviers--and Summers--was among the least surprising things she’d learned over dinner.

“Do they always talk this fast, Kurt?” Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle--the poor boy was a bundle of nerves.

“Sometimes,” he stammered into his salad. “Tonight it is different. We do not get new people very often.”

Emma nodded, opening her mouth to ask another question. The blue boy noticed and began bolting down food at an alarming pace. Taking pity on him, she turned to the woman at the head of the table instead.

“So, Professor,” she began, trying to hide her disdain for the woman, “am I to begin lessons on Monday?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Miss Frost. We ought to give you a few days to settle in, don’t you think?” Only a charming trace of a German accent remained in Erika Xavier’s voice after practically a decade in Westchester, which was slightly more than Emma would have suggested was left of her personality if anyone had bothered to ask her. What might at best have been termed a striking face had at least aged well, with only a hint of lines at the mouth and the edges of the eyes to remind one that Charles Xavier’s wife was well past forty. It had been something of a scandal when she was a girl, actually - the heir to the Xavier family taking up with a German-born British Jew who had, as the rumor had gone, a body like a fence rail and a face like a hatchet. What he’d seen in her had been the subject of a great deal of speculation at the time, but any interest had long since died out of the rumor. After forty minutes in the woman’s presence, Emma could well imagine why - the older woman was about as interesting as an out-of-date textbook. She laughed occasionally, ate quietly, and smiled benevolently whenever someone glanced in her direction. Even her courtesy was bland.

Emma gave one of her many artificial smiles. “I would enjoy the opportunity to see what you have in the library, maybe explore the grounds a bit.” _Perhaps do a little digging, probe a few minds..._ She wouldn’t let them keep all the cards for long.

A pair of students disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged with dessert platters. Emma sighed to herself, the brief exchange with Professor Xavier having dampened her mood. She’d give it another ten minutes before escaping to her rooms.

“Miss Frost, would you join me for a brandy in my office?” Picking up her small plate of brownie drowned in hot fudge, Professor Xavier rose from the table and offered Emma a cloyingly friendly smile. “I would like a word or two with you before bed.”

 _Dear god. What could she possibly have to say?_ Her own answering smile, Emma hoped, did not look as teeth-grindingly frustrated as she felt.

It was a fair walk to the modest room that apparently served as the headmistress’s office, up two floors and nearly to what were apparently the school’s in-house laboratories, and Professor Xavier filled the entire dreary climb with such a clatter of agonizingly dull trivia about the town of North Salem, the surrounding countryside and the new year’s curriculum that Emma was nearly ready to dive out the nearest window, if only for some variation in the evening.

Almost incredulously, she reached out to the woman’s mind, wondering if it was actually humanly possible to be that dull. _I suppose **that** could be her mutation,_ she muttered to herself. When her probing showed her only a gentle white noise, she bit her lip. _Christ, I was joking...._

“Right through here, Miss Frost.” Mrs. Xavier preceded her into the room, taking the chair behind the old oak business desk that was set up in front of the pair of large windows overlooking the grounds, and she could have sworn that there was just the faintest hint of amusement at the edge of the woman’s mouth. It was gone before she could pin it down, however, and part of her mind remarked snidely that she was probably starting to imagine things in the hope of producing something she could actually think about.

Emma folded herself gracefully onto a richly-upholstered chair and took a bite of brownie to forestall the need to say something. Her eyes roamed the room, taking in the bookshelves filled with scientific and literary classics, the carefully organized correspondence stacked neatly and discreetly to one side of the desk, the austere exactness of the handful of files that obviously hailed from the file cabinet in the corner. It was the study of a careful, well-organized mind with a keen eye for detail and a sweeping range of interests, and it did not seem even remotely possible that it could belong to the drab, earnestly friendly fool of a woman in front of her. The bourbon glass clicked softly on the desk in front of her, and when she looked up she found Erika Xavier watching her with that same bland smile still on her face but a watchful stillness in her eyes that had no place in that expression.

The telepath found herself listening more closely than she had been. _You might not bore me to death yet._

“A well-kept study, Professor.” She took the proffered tumbler with a gracious nod. “It does you credit, especially among the chaos of a school.”

“Private order is one of those little necessities that, once let go of, one never quite gets back. The first day that Charles and I decided we were ready to start admitting students to our school, I told him that I would need an office with a lock. He took me at my word.” Erika took a slow sip from her own brandy, studying Emma with an intensity of focus that Emma would not have credited her with over dinner. “What do you think of our little enterprise, Miss Frost?”

Taking a sip, Emma met her gaze. “It’s marvelous,” she surprised herself by admitting. “I’ve never seen so many mutants together, and so free with their gifts. Even the shy ones.” She leaned back, letting her hair fall over her shoulders. “Even so, I can’t help but wonder when an attack will come.”

“Very frank, Miss Frost.” The older woman arched an eyebrow inquiringly, her lips pulling back slightly over her teeth. “You don’t believe that the world in its wisdom will see fit to leave this place in peace and contemplation?”

Emma snorted her dismissal. “Please. I’d be surprised if more than a quarter of the children downstairs have escaped some form of abuse or another, and that’s without the assistance of the authorities who seem to be serving and protecting us less and less.” She watched the Professor’s penetrating eyes. “But something tells me that you knew my opinions already.”

That earned her a subtle smile that had as much in common with the friendly, senseless upturn of the lips she had been receiving all night as a tiger had with a lapdog. “To be perfectly frank, Miss Frost, those opinions weighed as highly in my decision to invite you here as your abilities. We are dedicated to the idea of peaceful coexistence here, where possible, but I have always thought that it is safer to set a guard who believes in the reality and imminence of the threats he guards against than to choose one who thinks the best of the world.”

Considering, the telepath took another sip. “I agree with you there,” she began, “though you should know--as you may already--that I am not a terribly agreeable person.” She let her habitual coldness smooth the lines of her face, hands glittering briefly around her glass. “It’s as much a part of me as my gift.”

“Considering how we first met, Miss Frost, I do not think that ‘not terribly agreeable’ really begins to cover it. However, I think you’ll find we have outlets for all of your talents here.” Erika’s expression sharpened around a particularly dry smile. “Even the less legally acceptable ones.”

Frowning, she touched Xavier’s mind--again, finding the white noise of thoughtlessness.

“Your mind is shielded in a unique way,” she told her hostess, opting to push back a little and see where it might get her. “I confess I’m curious.”

“A trained response, for the most part, though there is a level of natural talent to it. A sort of electromagnetic interference which apparently disrupts telepathy - an interesting scientific possibility, by the way, in that it suggests something about the mechanical process of your abilities.” Erika’s eyes met hers quiet levelly, and despite the smile still on the older woman’s lips there was enough iron in that gaze to knock Emma back in her chair.

“Electromagnetic--” she silenced herself before the shock in her voice embarrassed her further. Looking down at her drink, she was distantly unsettled to realize that she’d shifted into diamond without consciously meaning to.

Erika Lehnsherr Xavier simply toasted her and waited silently, serene as a mountain lake.

Wariness began to tinge Emma’s mind as frost clouds a window. She let it--she hadn’t survived her horrid family and teaching the toughest kids in New York by being foolhardy--but it was balanced by the rush of hunger--hunger for power, a meaningful life, delicious secrets.

She raised her glass in response, returning to flesh as she did so. “Congratulations, _Professor_. I drink to the health of the best liar I have ever met.”

“Practice makes perfect, Miss Frost.” Erika took a long swallow of her own drink, and her eyes gleamed with a hard edge of pleasure. “You, on the other hand, don’t disappoint. I was beginning to worry you weren’t going to decide you wanted to be useful when I got your call.”

The telepath smiled sharply. “I’ve lived too long among people whose pride blinds them to the truly important, Professor.  I’m not satisfied with pretty shadows.”

“Then I think you’ll find our little conspiracy very much to your taste. If you’ll come with me?” The way the Professor phrased the question made it only slightly less than an order, and she drained her glass with a sharp finality.

Emma smiled in subtle anticipation as they both stood and left the study. By the time they arrived at the unimpressive end of the main hallway, she was working hard to tamp down a rather undignified level of curiosity. The corridor ended with a window, a little vase on a half-moon table beneath, and two of the uglier portraits in the house staring down from either wall. Before the telepath could frame a question, the Professor faced one of the wall panels and pushed it gently inward with a small click.

The section of in front of them split smoothly and opened out, baring a pair of metal doors which also obediently opened. Erika Xavier walked coolly into the waiting elevator car and turned an expectant glance on Emma. “Coming?”

They descended a modest distance--perhaps six stories--before the doors opened again. This corridor was nothing like the upper levels of the mansion--sleek, solid metal sprang into brightness as lights flicked on. Half a dozen heavy, vault-like doors stood imposingly at intervals. As the Professor led her to a particular entrance, Emma noted that somehow their steps didn’t echo as loudly as they should. Erika caught her looking down and chuckled. “Acoustic tiling. It soundproofs the whole complex to keep any sound from leaking up in the mansion.” The door hissed open, exposing a well-stocked infirmary, and Erika continued down the corridor without further comment. The next door opened on a set of sleeping quarters - clean, spartan and large enough for perhaps six people at a pinch - and she passed the next two without opening them before selecting one of the doors on the right.

Inside was a small armory stocked with enough firepower to give the ATF fits.

“Well. You take the threats to us very seriously indeed.” Emma was fairly certain that at least a quarter of the weaponry was not civilian issue.

“We haven’t had to use any of this material yet. If we’re very, very lucky, we never will.” The Professor rested her fingertips against the door lightly, and her eyes were very distant. “I don’t expect us to be that fortunate.”

The rows and rows of guns gleamed dully at Emma, quietly asserting the scale of threat that Xavier expected to face. The telepath shook her head, half aghast, half impressed. “You’ve been training the children with these?”

“Everyone gets basic training - students, teachers, everyone. Those who choose to get more advanced training.” Erika was watching her closely, studying her reaction. “That bothers you?”

As if trying to clear it, Emma shook her head. “If we have to fight for our lives we might as well have the best artillery.” She ran a hand over the stock of a rifle contemplatively. “Still, I’d do a hundred terrible things to let them keep a little innocence, if I could.”

There was a steel in Erika’s voice a good deal harder than the guns around them. “You should be careful what you wish for, Miss Frost. I will likely ask you to do exactly that, and rather more than a hundred times.”

The telepath smiled sideways at her hostess. “Ethics teacher by day, freedom fighter by night? I suppose I’ve done more ridiculous things.”

“If you have,” the other woman chucked with just a hint of dryness in the humor, “I confess I’m curious to know what they are.”

“And give up my one remaining mystery?” With crossed arms and a raised eyebrow, she was the picture of composure. “Lead on.”

Still laughing very softly, Erika walked down to one end of the hall and tapped a long code into the pad by the door, then stepped through into what appeared to be a bare room whose walls, floors and ceiling all bore the same cross-hatched metal pattern. She shrugged out of her jacket as she passed through the door, tossing it back into the hallway, then walked to the center of the room and spread her hands as though feeling the air. “Come in, Emma.”

Waiting for the other shoe--even as she secretly hoped there was, in fact, another shoe--Emma took a deliberate step forward into the room. The door hissed shut behind her.

Erika kicked off her shoes, gliding across the metal of the floor in stockinged feet that seemed hardly to touch it, and threw the smile of a woman a decade her junior across her shoulder. “Does that remarkable diamond form of yours tire you to use?”

The muffled echo of Emma’s footsteps acquired a crystalline quality as she shifted. “The transition takes work, but it’s easy to maintain.” The world became more distant, more orderly. “Sometimes I can get...too used to it, so I try not to stay too long.”

“I have some experience with that idea.” Erika’s voice dropped subtly, picking up the edge of a growl, and she turned slowly in place with her eyes closed before opening them with a palpable force that vibrated like the strings of a tuned instrument. “Armor can be very tempting shield against the world, if one lets it.”

Around them, the walls began to hum and vibrate with the sound of invisible engines.

Eyes darting around the room, the telepath forgot herself enough to allow the wonder she felt to color her voice. “What is this place?”

“This, Miss Frost?” Professor Xavier’s feet lifted from the floor as the walls began to segment and rotate, and she looked down on Emma with a falcon’s smile. “This is the Danger Room.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Westchester: August 27, 1973**

Sneakers, Emma decided, were terrible for a good stomp. Her own footsteps echoing sharply off the paved walkways of the mansion would have communicated her displeasure in a satisfyingly tangible way, and the disappointment of quiet rubber soles stoked her already impressive temper. As she stalked across the grounds and into the building, she catalogued the numerous frustrations and irritations of the past thirty-six hours.

The session in the Danger Room had been exhausting - she’d never had to keep up with another mutant before - and going straight from high-speed combat practice to checking the students’ rooms before lights out was a bit jarring. Then, since the mansion was older than indoor plumbing, she’d had to negotiate her bath with her suitemate. Ororo seemed nice enough, but Emma had never had to share a bathroom in her life.

Then there was lying down in a house full of people who’d had mind-shield training. The mental white noise was strange and unnerving in its strangeness. It took Emma a couple of hours to be able to relax enough to sleep. Of course, that was right around the time everyone else was falling asleep, too, and dropping their shields as they nodded off. Dreaming minds were not soothing.

The next day, Sunday, had been filled down to the minute. Meals, a comprehensive tour of the grounds and buildings, reading student profiles, observing Ororo’s book club in the garden, more meals, and planning lessons.

Then there was the baseball game, which was certainly novel. She didn’t think they’d ever find Joanna’s home run. Maybe someone in the next county would.

And of course she was ‘invited’ to help Scott supervise Board Game Night. Spending time with that particular boy scout was swiftly earning a place on her Most Likely Motives for Crime list.

After settling in for another night, a far-too-serene Ororo had awoken Emma at five thirty for Morning Exercise, which was apparently universally mandatory. She was subjected to indignities like sweat suits and jogging. Mister Summers had led the group in calisthenics, and she was giving it a fifty-fifty chance that he came down with a sudden, inexplicable case of night terrors before she quit.

Sweaty, in ugly clothes, before seven in the morning, Emma Frost walked into the Xavier’s kitchen with a strong need to eat - or maybe kill - something. Her miserable agitation was probably what stopped her from noticing the huge Russian boy staring into the refrigerator before she literally ran into him.

He caught her before she could fall, which only made it more awkward when he stammered something incomprehensible in Russia while thinking embarrassingly loudly about her waist and neck in the fuzzy, not-quite-sure-how-to-go-about-it way of teenaged boys everywhere. Not that she could read the more formed of his thoughts, of course - she didn’t speak Russian - but the underlying imagery and symbology was perfectly comprehensible.

Disentangling herself and retreating a firm arms-length away, she put on a brittle smile, projecting thoughts of forgiveness and cold showers. The boy blushed, ducked his head and became suddenly very interested in the ham-on-toast he was attempting to prepare. “ _Da, blagoi_.... ah... I mean, yes. Good. Shower is good. It is a warm day, yes? And you speak in my mind and this is perhaps a little strange.”

 _And you didn’t speak a word of English three days ago_ , Emma concluded, scanning his memories. While she’d entertained the idea, once or twice, of adding a language to someone’s mind, she’d never attempted it, given how globally a language encompassed someone’s brain. The telepath who’d done this - she plucked an image of a laughing _babushka_ from the boy’s thoughts - was either very skilled or very willing to take risks, or both.

With a light mental nudge, she urged the boy aside, and reached into the fridge herself for some orange juice. “So, Peter, is it?” She flicked carefully forward a little from the old woman, finding a glimpse of Erika in a dark Russian field under the stars guiding the boy toward a great black shape that hung softly rumbling in the still night air, then further back to the moment that seemed to dominate the boy’s own thoughts - tall grain ready for the harvest, a small blonde girl half-lost in it, a great red and gray mass of scything metal, and then the crash and shatter of that same metal smashing itself to pieces above and around him while he shielded the girl in arms that gleamed dull silver.

“You’ve had a busy week, haven’t you?” As she watched him sit uncomfortably at the kitchen table, eating his breakfast, memories of another violent encounter filled Emma’s mind. A blind corner of an expensive boarding school wasn’t a farm, and an upperclassman with the idea that Emma owed him was only _almost_ as dumb as a tractor, but both dangers provoked a change in those they threatened, and both broke themselves on the no-longer-helpless adolescents.

_Oh, child. If only we didn’t have to be so hard to survive this world._

Draining the orange juice, she placed the empty glass on the counter and started on toast. “Peter,” she said as she began to glitter, “I’m glad you’re here.”

He looked up, thinking he might want to apologize again, and then saw her and stared. It was a strange thing, seeing herself through his eyes before her mind became entirely closed in - glittering, faceted eyes set in a face that was crystalline and transparent where the gleam and sparkle allowed light to refract through it. Her hair was a sheen of overlapping crystalline strands, her hands almost glowing with the touch of the sunlight coming through the window, the sweaty and rumpled exercise garments suddenly incapable of making her look even slightly bedraggled. She could not remember - with the exception of Erika, who was a woman the heavens themselves might struggle to frighten - the last person who had seen her turn to diamond without recoiling from the sight, but Pitor Nikolaievitch Rasputin was not afraid of her in the slightest.

She awed him, and if she had been capable of it she might have blushed.

The cool silence of her diamond form steadied her, putting an unbreakable wall between herself and all the frustration, anger, and agitation of the morning. They would be waiting for her when she returned to flesh, but for now she was glad to evade them for a while.

“Can you actually eat that way?” Scott Summer’s cheerfully indefatigable voice inquired from the door of the kitchen as he bounded in, sweats clinging to his skin and an absolutely indecent smile on his face. “I’ve been wondering about that since I heard you could do it. Is it like H.G. Wells, where the food only slowly becomes invisible, or...”

The toast was rendered so many breadcrumbs falling to the floor.

“Or, Mister Summers,” Emma retorted, grabbing a paper towel, “you could stop asking intrusive questions.”

It was when she was wiping up the toast crumbs that she realized that she'd become flesh again without willing it. It had been a very long time since that had happened.

“I could,” he retorted smoothly as he opened the fridge, pulled out one of the three gallons of milk inside, and filled himself an absurdly tall glass, “but then I'd probably never learn anything, and this _is_ supposed to be a school. Good morning, Piotr. There is a baseball game forming on field. Do you want to join in?”

“Ah... what is this 'baseball'?” the big Russian inquired, interested but visibly nervous.

“The greatest game in the world,” Summers replied with a smile. “Go on out – Heather will get you straightened out. You'll know her by the sunglasses, the leather jacket and the black skin. Enjoy yourself.”

Tossing the remains of the toast in the bin, Emma decided on an apple from the big bowl on the table just as the resounding crunch of breaking wood could be heard from outside. “You must go through bats and balls awfully fast.”

“We buy wholesale,” he shot back as Pitor's excitement got the better of his nerves and sent the towering boy tumbling out the kitchen door toward the promise of an athletic contest he might not understand but could at least depend on his physical talents to carry him through. Summers watched him go, smiling to himself, then turned back to Emma and gave her a mock-toast with the glass of milk. “To Monday morning runs – you survived.”

Emma stared flatly at him and his milk. His mind remained the metal sphere, and she wasn't willing to outright attack him—yet. “I never doubted I would. You, on the other hand...”

Undaunted, Summers took a long swallow of his milk and grinned. “You wound me, Miss Frost. No faculty solidarity? No fellow-feeling? No _esprit-de-corps_?”

Emma winced at his poor treatment of the French language as the apple core followed the toast crumbs. “None whatsoever, Mister Summers,” she answered as she strode towards the door. “Perhaps later, if I haven't fled this _commune_ by then.”

“My aunt's actually part of one of those, when it suits her. From what she tells me, it's rather idyllic. No men, of course, so that lets me right out....”

“Perfect,” the telepath called from the hallway, not bothering to turn around.

“Of course,” Summers called after her, “there's the mandatory bed rotations....”

Feeling slightly ridiculous, Emma nonetheless kicked off her borrowed sneakers, turned to diamond, and stalked loudly across the marble-paved foyer on her way to the stairs.

* * *

**September 4, 1973**

“Please do tell me,” Emma intoned sternly, arms crossed, “what both of you were thinking when you began throwing...” here the Ethics teacher paused, searching for a word she'd never had to use before, taking the opportunity to give both teenaged girls standing in front of her desk a meaningful look, “light-bursts at each other. Indoors. In the middle of my class.”

“She won't leave Jean-Paul alone!” the French-Canadian girl blurted out. “I can't stand how she's always hanging around him, especially since she's basically Roberto's _girlfriend_ , the way he gives her stuff, and -”

“Not like it's any business of _yours_ , but Roberto and I are just friends.” Alison's arch upstate New York accent gave her voice an even more dismissive tone than her emotions indicated she meant to put across, which was more than enough. “And you're JP's sister, not his fucking girlfriend, so why the hell do you care? He's a big enough boy to....”

“Enough!” Emma had not raised her voice, but the crisp coldness of the word – and perhaps a hint of projected fear – cut through the girls' fighting. “Allowing your social problems to supercede your judgement is unacceptable. Jeanne-Marie,” the teacher turned to the girl in question, who was trying hard to hide how nervous she was, “because you used your gifts thoughtlessly, you are confined to your room during free time for the next three days. Further, tomorrow morning you will each give a copy of your notes to Kurt since his were destroyed.” Emma's eyes strayed a few feet away to the smear of charcoal marring a student desk in the second row. “Finally, Professor Xavier will tell you what to do about the desk.” Well, the charcoal was on the splintered remains of a student desk, since Joanna had succeeded in putting out the small fire, but overextended herself sufficiently in the process to make the desk quite unsalvageable.

The telepath allowed a long pause for the words to sink in, and to reflect that her students in New York had usually waited until the fifth or sixth day of a new year to start destroying property. Not to mention that their efforts in that direction were usually restricted to writing, carving or rocking in their chairs. “I will inform the other teachers of your misbehavior and punishment.”

Jeanne-Marie nodded once, body held straight, a slight tremor in her hands revealing her distress.

“And you, Alison,” Miss Frost continued, staring down the sulky New Yorker, “will have double cleaning duty for three days and three extra tutoring sessions with Professor Richter, specifically concerning unintended consequences and environmental effects.”

“But....” Alison took a look at her new teacher's eyes, decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and nodded her head before going on in a much more subdued voice. “Yes, Miss Frost.”

“Good.” Emma stood, scooping up the leather folio of lesson plans, and gestured to the door. “Now, go to your scheduled tutoring sessions. I will see you tomorrow.”

The students left the room as quickly as they could while still trying to look unconcerned. The telepath crossed the room to the windows, open since poor Kurt had teleported away from his burning schoolwork and left a cloud of sulphur, as well as the smoke from the fire, hanging in the room.

Some of the teachers she’d worked with in the city had leaned out their windows to smoke. Under the circumstances, taking up the habit would probably be redundant. She dragged the fresh breeze into her lungs, closed her eyes and tried to relax.

Eventually, the air in the room was reasonably clear, and it looked like rain was coming. She supposed she could ask Ororo for a more specific forecast, but as long as she opened the room as soon as she came down to breakfast the next day, it would be well-aired for the second day of classes.

“Looks like the desk is a loss. Still, could have been worse.” Scott Summers, wearing an appallingly bourgeoisie suit and tie in navy blue and his usually ruby-tinted sunglasses, leaned in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and surveyed the room with the surreal calm of someone who apparently expected this sort of thing on a daily or weekly basis. “I don't think I've ever seen Joanna admit to being embarrassed before.”

Latching the window shut, Emma turned and leaned on the sill. “I think it's a reasonable counter-weight to her pride in putting the fire out.” The combination, Emma decided, of Scott's glasses and mental shielding made him infuriatingly hard to read. Not to mention that she couldn't make anything of the rest of him – he was too diffident, too calm, too casually at home and too utterly irritating to make any sense. “Shall I write everyone a note, or is there a bulletin board of shame in the headmistress's office?”

“In the library, actually, though we don't call it that. Maybe we should start.” Hands still tucked in his pockets, he wandered over to the window and looked out over the grounds. “Alison and Jeanne-Marie again, right?”

“Again?” Emma sighed. “Must be quite the feud for them to start up again a day after the Beaubiers returned from abroad.”

“We were hoping the time and space was going to do them good.” Scott shrugged, leaning against the old radiator-style heater and finally loosening his tie a bit. “Alison Blaire and Jeanne-Marie have always been fire and gasoline, but when Alison started taking an interest in Jean-Paul last June.... well, let's just say it didn't go so well. We had early fireworks.”

Emma snorted. “Usually it's the brother who's overprotective.”

Something shifted behind the smooth shield of Scott's mind, and the corner of his mouth twitched up in a faint hint of a smile that could have meant everything or nothing. “Not that she doesn't have reason,” he said in a quiet, distantly sad voice which was so unlike his normal tones that Emma nearly knocked over the stack of draft essays she'd been collecting, “but it does make things a little difficult. Especially when Alison's … well, stubborn.”

The first glimpse past his shields was too intriguing. Emma touched his mind with a barely-there touch, trying to feel the shape of his thought. It slipped through her fingers like water, left regret and rueful amusement clinging to the roof of her mouth. “Stubborn.” Tapping the stack of loose-leaf against a desk, she raised a sardonic eyebrow. “That would be a very understated, scarcely adequate way to describe her.”

“Hard to blame her.” Whatever was on his mind, Scott shook it away from the surface and turned back to Emma with an easy smile. “She's like you – queen of every room she's walked into since she was five years old. If she weren't a walking lightshow, she'd probably be on Carol Burnett making the boys swoon, but here she is instead.”

White-blonde waves flared around her as Emma's head whipped around and her careful morning's work pinning her hair up finally gave out. “Regarding Alison, I will take your word for it,” she bit off, stepping close enough to Summers to see the shape of his eyes behind his glasses, “but do not for a minute think you know me.”

He didn't back up, didn't even flinch, and as he straightened up Emma became very suddenly aware that Scott Summers was at least two or three inches taller than he usually made it a habit to appear. He reached up with one hand, carefully adjusting those ruby lenses while he stared down at her through them, and then answered her in a voice as quiet and polite as her own had been sharp and angry. “I apologize, Emma,” he said, each word as carefully placed as a rivet. “It was a stupid thing to say, and I ought to know better.”

There was nothing in his outward appearance or the smooth blankness of his mind to belie his words, and after a moment Emma composed herself and nodded. “Very well, I accept your apology. I trust it won't happen again.”

“It won't.” The edge of his mouth ticked up, the faint hint of a smile again, and his hands slipped back into his pockets as he deliberately relaxed his shoulders and quite obviously resumed his usual posture of ease. “I came by to ask if you wanted to have something to drink before dinner. Beer or wine – nothing top shelf – but I usually need one by the end of the first day.”

Quickly blinking away her surprise, Emma felt herself starting to smile. “No liquor on a school night, boy scout?”

“Only if the Professor invites us to her office after dinner. Which usually means that someone, somewhere is in trouble or about to be.” He returned the smile with interest, easing a step to the side to open her way to the door. “If you'd deign to join me, Miss Frost, I'll do what I can to make up for the lack.”

“I expect nothing less,” she replied archly as they left the room. “God knows that after today, I unquestionably deserve it.”

They laughed together, which was disconcertingly pleasant, until they reached to foot of the stairs and something occurred to Emma.

“What did you mean, 'it could be worse'?”

“There was a two week period, when I was fifteen or so, during which the master bedroom, most of the upper stories of the east wing _and_ the main kitchen had to be completely remodelled.” He grinned to himself, and she could feel the laughter in his head even through his shields. “It could very definitely be worse.”

“Good god.” Emma stopped on the stairs, staring after him until he paused and looked back down at her, and when she finally found her voice again she could tell that the disbelief in her voice was a source of considerable pleasure for him. “Exactly what sort of school have you and Professor Xavier brought me to, Summers?”

“The Xavier School for the Gifted, Miss Frost,” he replied, turning away with a private smile of delight on his face that she more felt than saw. “Glad to have you with us.”


	4. Interlude by Way of Southeast Asia

**Saigon : September 6, 1973**

“Peace,” Colonel William Stryker told the bottom of his glass, “is a damned illusion.”

Evidence for that conclusion, had he required any to begin with, would not have been hard to find. Ten months ago, his government had signed a ‘peace treaty’ that was little better than an admission that they were throwing in the towel and abandoning their erstwhile allies to the doubtlessly absent mercies of the Viet Cong, but here he was - sitting on a badly upholstered bar stool in front of a rough wooden bar serving the dregs of what had once probably been a decent collection of liquor, listening to scream of mortar fire and the absence of English chatter in the room, tasting the bitter echo of the first war his country had ever truly lost.

Wondering, though he did not dare give the thought voice even here, just how many human beings - illiterate peasants that they might be - were throwing their lives away when the real war had scarcely advanced past a few sharp skirmishes.

Sliding his glass forward and tapping the bar, Stryker watched the slight bartender approach with the last of the Scotch. The Vietnamese man was silent as he emptied the bottle into the Colonel’s glass, shrugging when there wasn’t enough for two fingers. “Bourbon if you want more. Some vodka.”

Stryker shook his head, and the man wandered back to the other end of the bar. He took another swallow of his drink, thought about lighting a cigar, remembered that his doctor had insisted he quit smoking them if he wanted to be around long enough for the work he had in mind. Resisted the urge to swear under his breath with a reflexive act of self-discipline.

The sharp, distinct tang of Russian tobacco smoke curled around his shoulder like the wrong sort of woman, and he thought about washing it away with the rest of the Scotch. Decided not to. “Put it out, Logan.”

“Still quitting?” The low, growling voice behind him had no discernible accent, as the man to which it belonged had no particularly discernible ethnic origin. That hardly failed to make him distinctive. Even in the concealing cut of a rumpled Lieutenant Colonel’s uniform - 11th Infantry Brigade, American - there was no disguising the breadth and depth of his chest or the slope-shouldered hunch of his frame, and his perpetual beard and rumpled hair did little to hide the primitive, ill-favored look of his face.  If there was a shorter, uglier man that William Stryker had met in his life, he could not recall him.

“Some of us can’t grow them back,” he said dryly, turning cold dark eyes on the man who was decidedly not a Lieutenant Colonel, much less of the 11th Infantry. “I trust you enjoyed your diversion?”

“She did,” Logan grinned in a way that showed too many teeth, waving a blunt-fingered hand to the server for a beer.

“You’re a savage,” Stryker retorted, fighting down a hint of disgust that would not have been useful in dealing with the man who was rapidly becoming his most valuable soldier.

“Your idea not to send me out with the cleaners,” Logan shrugged in reply, downing half his beer in long, hard swallows.

Stryker’s eyes narrowed. “Your personal enjoyment aside, it’s a delicate operation. Not something that required a dozen bodies torn apart by way of announcement.”

“So you sent the Cajun, David and the Widow. Oh, yeah. Real subtle, boss.”

“The sooner this is done, the sooner we can leave.” Turning his attention back to his drink, Stryker swallowed slowly and studied himself in the dirty mirror above the bar. There was fresh gray in his hair that hadn’t been there a year ago, new lines around his eyes. He was spending too many hours before dawn going over plans to counter plans that might never even be brought into play against him, and he knew it. “We’ve wasted too much time on this sideshow, and we have business waiting at home.”

He caught a glimpse of red hair by the door, under a khaki mechanic’s cap, and finished his drink with a long swallow. “Drink up. We’ll be on the plane in an hour.”

“Shame.” Logan rose to his feet, knocked off the rest of his beer and started for the door after his Colonel. “I was starting to like it here.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Westchester: September 18, 1973**

Crouching behind a metal barrier as a volley of paintballs flew by overhead and splattered on the wall, Emma ran a hand over the subtly textured surface of the  brand-new protective plating on her thigh. The three sets of camouflaged body armor had appeared in her bedroom two days before, along with matching helmets and stretchy bodysuits to wear underneath. It was even more unglamorous than the hated sweatsuit, but at least she felt like she could take on an army wearing the stuff.

Scott - Cyclops, she reminded herself - crouched in front of her. Opposite them, across a narrow opening between two plates of metal, were Heather and Kurt - Tempo and Nightcrawler, respectively - and behind Emma was John. Today he was just John, since he was playing the role of a hostage, and strictly forbidden from punching, crushing, tearing, lifting, or otherwise altering the environment. His protests had been long and loud, but apparently he needed the discipline training. Something to do with attempting to juggle someone’s motorcycle.

A subtle mechanical noise warned them of another flurry of paintballs, this time from a different angle. Emma shooed John closer to the barrier.

“Just how many turrets are there?” the telepath murmured to Cyclops.

“Plenty,” he replied tersely, coming up onto one knee and bringing his gloved hand up to the edge of the ruby-tinted visor of his helmet. Whether there was actually a mechanism there that he manipulated with the gesture or it was simply a psychological cue, she hadn’t yet discovered, but either way it served the purpose - a narrow red line of energy flashed out, ricocheting off the ceiling and then the far wall and then the floor, smashing paintballs to useless droplets by the dozen. Here and there a ball would slow at an opportune moment, seemingly of its own accord, drifting like a soap bubble into one of the rapidly multiplying spokes of refracted red light. Hard, percussive bursts of sound broke up the electric whine of the paintball guns as Tempo began methodically putting a .45 handgun round into each concealed turret she could spot, and the distinctive _bamf_ of displaced air as Kurt - Nightcrawler - vanished in his usual cloud of dense blue, black and violet smoke. Through the haze of red light and spattering paint, she could pick out the dark bursts of his arrival and departure, punctuated each time by the downward stab of a curved sword blade to disable a turret or take it out of alignment.

Underneath the stillness of her diamond mind she was still unsettled from watching her warm, friendly student suddenly harden into an emotionless warrior. Still, it left Emma with no doubt that Nightcrawler was a full member of the team, talented and deadly just like Tempo and Cyclops. It made her bar fights seem childish.

Fresh turrets began to whine on either side of them, and Cyclops growled something under his breath before speaking again in a voice that was far too calm. “Flankers. We have to move for the door again. Tempo, clear left. I’ll clear right. Nightcrawler, overwatch. White Queen, move John out. Questions? Good.”

She would have rolled her eyes if she’d had the time and attention to spare, but as it was, she grabbed John’s massive hand, glad that he wouldn’t be hurt by her crystal-hard grip, and waited for a pathway to clear.

The Danger Room was a training ground that shamed anything the military could produce. The walls, floor and ceiling were all composed of modular steel plates, and these could be moved or replaced with barriers, platforms, or other objects. A computer housed in a relatively small adjacent study, whose window looked down on the Danger Room from ceiling level, controlled the turrets and other hazards. Emma was sure that nearly any kind of combat, extraction, or recon mission could be simulated in the Xavier’s basement.

A paint-ball free moment arrived, and just after Cyclops and Tempo darted forward, Emma pulled John out from behind the barriers. They ran in a crouch for another set of barriers about halfway down the room, Scott’s ruby energy blasts ripping up walls and turrets to their right and Tempo smashing up targets with more precise gunfire on their left. They had only a couple of yards left to go when a series of clanks and whirrs from behind them made Emma pull John to the floor and throw herself over him. All along the back wall a dozen turrets emerged from the wall on rotating panels and began to cover the room with a blanket of paintballs.

In her diamond form, Emma could take as many hits as she needed to and still be counted ‘alive’ by the rules of the scenario. Standing between John and the turrets, she stood firm while paintball after paintball exploded on her armor and superhard skin. John grumbled behind her, but remained unwounded. As the hostage, the entire mission failed if he was hit.

Conversely, Cyclops, Tempo and Nightcrawler could only take four each before declared ‘dead,’ one if it was a headshot. Nightcrawler teleported to cover, and an almost synchronized vault over the barriers ahead of them removed Cyclops and Tempo from immediate danger, but Emma couldn’t see where they landed. She thought she heard Cyclops yelling something, but she couldn’t make it out over the turrets and the sound of paintballs splattering on and all around her.

_This isn’t working._

Quickly but gently, Emma reached out to her teammates, knocking loudly on their mental barriers. _Conference call, X-Men. We have to communicate somehow._

 _I hear you,_ Scott’s voice said in her head, the cool composure of his mind over the boiling thicket of his suppressed emotions instantly familiar. _We’re boxed, and we can only keep them from ‘coming up behind you’ for so long. Eventually, the computer’s going to decide that they move up on the two of you, Emma, and then we’re done. Heather, how are you for juice?_

Even inside her own mind, the time-warper sounded distant. _Good, but I have about five balls in the air right now, and I’d need to drop a couple for anything big. Don’t say ‘when’ until you mean it._

 _Got it._ Scott was silent another moment, other than bouncing covering fire off the far wall to pick off some of the turrets plastering Emma with paint, and then she could almost see him smile in her head. _Here’s what I want. Heather, I want you to drop everything else and pull Kurt and Emma and John out of the stream- get them going fast, fast enough that they’ll have plenty of time for this before the next set of paint balls hit. Kurt, you ‘port in and grab John, then drop him right behind me. Emma, once he’s got John out of the way, how do you feel about punching the stuffing out of those turrets for me?_

A tart wryness tinged Emma’s response. _With pleasure._

_Kurt?_

_Ja, Cyclops. Bitte._ The icy rage of Kurt’s mind - of Nightcrawler’s - was as tightly coiled as a snake.

 _Right, then._ Scott smashed a line of turrets to ruin with a refracted arc of his gaze, then bared his teeth in a smile at the sudden redoubling of fire as the computer brought out more turrets in that direction. _On my mark. In five.... four.... three... two... one... mark._

On cue, a weird tingling sensation coursed through Emma. The room around her slowed dramatically, the paintballs moving like marbles through honey, sounds distorted into long, low parodies of themselves. Fascinated, the telepath reached out towards a globe of ruby-red paint hanging in the air before her, and gently closed her paint-drenched diamond fingers around it. At her touch it burst, plastic skin slowly parting to let the color inch into the air.

Before a drop had made it past the breach, a clap of outwards rushing air sounded right behind Emma, startling her. A half-second later there was another, and John was gone. She could feel him about five yards behind her, woozy from the teleportation but safely behind cover.

Wrinkling her nose at the sulphurous smoke in the air, Emma strode forward, waving paintballs aside like flies, and glanced along the line of turrets. She was going to enjoy this.

Before she reached the nearest gun, Emma slowed back to normal speed, almost tripping as her velocity pushed her forward. She put the momentum behind her first punch, shattering the body of the turret with a satisfying crunch. The next she grabbed by the barrel, wrenched it away from the tripod, and began using it like a club, smashing through the line of machines as they futilely aimed for her.

 _John’s clear,_ Cyclops’s voice murmured in her head a couple of minutes later, when the turret fire had turned sporadic in the computer’s recognition of the fact that even the most determined soldiers on the defensive would fall back in the face of an opponent they could not seem to hurt. _Kurt and Tempo, too. Just waiting on you, White Queen._

 _Almost done,_ Emma replied cooly. Swinging the broken-off gun like the baseball bats she disdained, the third- and second-to-last turrets flew apart into equal parts shrapnel and paint. The last turret tried to retract into the wall, but bits of its fallen comrades were wedged into the swivel mechanism and its motor revved in vain.

The White Queen put the thing out of its misery with three sharp swings, and then tossed the improvised weapon aside.

As if she were wearing her customary silk blouses and Italian wool skirts and not paint-drenched military gear, she strode calmly over to the rest of the group.

“Did anyone die?”

Even though Scott had withdrawn behind the usual smooth shield of his mental blocks, Emma could still taste the smile on his lips under the metal of his helmet. “No, but Kurt is going to be limping for a few days.”

“It is only a sprain,” the boy said in his accented English, shrugging. Now that the mission was over, her student’s mind was back with all its curiosity and warmth and laughter. “Nothing to worry about, and we rescued our hostage, yes?” he said, smiling slyly at John.

Proudstar glared. “Nobody told me teleporting made you nauseous,” he grumbled.

“Knew you had to make up for that tough hide of yours somewhere. Weak stomach. Good to know.” Checking her guns in preparation for cleaning them, Heather had shed her helmet but left her tight-braided hair pinned up at the back of her head. “Try not to eat right before a mission, okay?”

John’s only answer was a flat stare.

“Hit the showers and rack your gear,” Scott ordered them calmly, unperturbed; it had become clear to Emma by now that Heather Tucker (or Xavier, because which it was seemed to vary with her mood) and John Proudstar did not exactly get along, and Scott was pretty accustomed to them snapping at each other. “John, lights out is at ten. Don’t forget your homework.”

A laughing grin spread across the Apache’s face. “Sorry, Teach, I graduated. Remember?”

Scott stopped in the middle of pulling his helmet off, expression utterly nonplussed, and then fished his glasses out of his bag and put them on while he struggled to suppress a laugh himself. “I could have sworn I was just assigning you your first trig assignment yesterday.”

Their connection fading to an echo, Emma could still tell that Scott’s good-natured laugh at himself was genuine. If she hadn’t still been in diamond form, it would have pushed uncomfortably on her own mind.

A friendly pat on the back accompanied John’s rebuttal. “Well, Mister Summers, don’t worry. Getting old can happen to anyone.”

“Mister Proudstar,” Scott replied with sly grin of his own, “unless you want to find yourself playing target and hostage for the rest of the fall, I suggest you go hit the showers before you speak any more unpleasant truths to power.”

With a grin and a mock salute, John stopped just outside the Danger Room’s exit. “Sir, yes, sir.” Before he could burst into laughter, he jogged down the underground corridor towards the elevator.

“I too will go,” Kurt said to his leader. “I really do have homework.”

The remainder of the team were left waving teleportation smoke away. “I guess I’ll forgive him, seeing as he has a sprained ankle,” Heather muttered, “but Lord, that boy makes a stink.”

“We all have our little foibles,” Scott retorted mildly, squeezing Heather’s shoulder through the armor. “Remember the three-minute meat pie?”

His sister grimaced. “Not lately. Thanks for bringing _that_ up, brother dear.”

“Humility is good for the soul,” he told her, grinning comfortably.

Behind him, Emma rolled her eyes. “No one told me we’re a spiritual institution as well as academic and paramilitary. I’d hate to have to re-write my lesson plans.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it eventually.” Scott glanced over his shoulder at her, still grinning, and let Heather go in the process. “I can already see the order of worship for your ordination now.”

Holding back a laugh despite herself, Emma raised an eyebrow. “Is there a ridiculous hat?”

“All your hats are ridiculous, Miss Frost,” Heather opined as she headed for the door. “But I’m sure we can one-up you if we all put our minds to it.” Then she flickered like a broken movie projector and vanished before Emma could begin to contemplate a riposte.

“Well,” she said to the air that had recently held her colleague. Turning to Scott she gestured to her clothing. “I am not spending another minute in this. Should I slop it down the laundry chute or just burn it?”

“Leave it with the rest of the equipment. John’s on cleaning detail - he’ll get to it.” Scott studied her from behind those red glasses, frustratingly hard to read again until his mouth turned up at the edges in a bemused little smile.

Indulging herself with a glare, Emma began striding down the hallway. “You may be shielded, but you’re still a man, Summers. Stop thinking about that.”

“I was thinking about going out,” he called after her, a hint of laughter in his voice as he headed for the showers himself. “What were you thinking about, Miss Frost?”

A perfectly manicured, exquisite diamond finger, no less beautiful for being covered in robin’s egg blue, was his only answer before Emma tracked paint into the elevator and vanished from sight. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Deception of a partner

**Westchester : September 20, 1973**

“Emma...” Scott began for the third time in a row as they started down the steps from the library with books still in hand, and had no better luck getting more than her name in edgewise before she ran right over him again.

“...and each subject has its own rhythm and sequence to it. Postponing exams or papers until days or even weeks after the last lesson on the material is a terrible idea, and I won’t stand for it, nor would I ask it of another teacher.” Brushing a strand of platinum-blonde hair over her shoulder, the telepath turned sharply at the main staircase. “Besides which, the students need to learn to manage their own time. Life does not line up its demands in an orderly fashion and they need practice coping with that.”

“So what you’re saying,” Scott said, glancing over her shoulder as they started down, probably from some chauvinistic concern that she was going to trip while talking and walking at the same time, “is that life is full of uncomfortable surprises, and our students should stop complaining and learn to deal with them?”

Navigating the deep carpeting of the stairs in Prada heels like she was born in them, Emma felt justified in her exasperated triumph. She’d only been going over and over the same point for fifteen minutes. “Yes, exactly.”

“Um,” Scott concluded his argument in typical eloquence. Then he cleared his throat a little too ostentatiously. “Welcome home, Mister Xavier. Jean. Miss Paige.”

After a pause, Emma turned a gracious smile at the people who had just entered the mansion and did an excellent impression of someone who had been completely aware of her surroundings the whole time. Likewise, she was able to contain her surprise at what she saw.

She knew about Xavier’s accident. Practically everyone in New York did - a violent car wreck one icy January night a couple of years before. The papers had mentioned that the philanthropist was in critical condition, but either they’d stopped reporting or Emma had stopped paying attention after that.

His cardigan and face were basically the same as she remembered them from the various high society parties they’d both attended years ago, although he had more wrinkles and substantially less hair now. All that was normal, expected. The wheelchair he sat in was not. It was a terrible reminder that the only thing between herself and a hospital bed was one bad moment.

She wondered if marrying him was just Erika’s cover and funding, or if there was something more to it.

All this passed through her mind in the space of a blink.

“Hello, Miss,” a mild, faintly British-accented voice greeted her. Turning his chair to face her, he extended a hand and a warm smile that, Emma had to admit, was at least a little charming. “You must be the new Ethics and Composition teacher. Charles Xavier.”

She felt unused strength in his calloused grip as she returned the gesture. “Emma Frost, Mister Xavier. Nice to meet you.”

 _Indeed,_ the same friendly voice spoke into her mind, sending her pulse racing in shock. _It’s wonderful to have a telepath on our regular faculty. If any more students need the training, I don’t need to worry about my absence._

“Likewise, Miss Frost,” he said aloud while Emma stood transfixed and blinking. “Ah, Scott, it’s good to see you.”

“Mister Xavier,” Scott replied, smiling, and bent down enough to put his arms around the older man. “Gone four months, and no entourage of new students trailing in the door after you? I’m disappointed, sir, deeply disappointed.”

As the two men embraced, Emma brushed her shaking mental touch over Xavier’s mind. It was an impression of warmth and blazing light, of intricate music and entwining spaces, a complicated golden labyrinth at once enticing and terrifying. Before she could draw away, the whole thing became opaque and seemed to softly push her back.

 _We will speak later about proper mental etiquette, Miss Frost,_ he gently rebuffed her. _In the meantime, you have others to meet._

Almost jumping, Emma turned to the young women standing in the foyer. The one with honey-blonde hair stepped forward, smiling brightly and offering her own hand.

“Miss Frost, was it? I’m Alice Paige, Mister Xavier’s assistant. I’m so glad to meet you,” she gushed. Sincerity and surface thoughts were floating off the woman’s mind like soap bubbles, and Emma had only to open her mind to read them. It wasn’t as though she was breaking through a shield or touching without knocking.

Emma’s smile faltered when one of the surface thoughts turned out to involve a night spent with Mister Xavier in a decidedly unprofessional manner. She returned Alice’s greeting automatically, and turned to the redhead.

Redheads. She would have sworn there was only one of them a moment ago, the fresh-faced girl in the Oxford skirt suit and blouse with a modest updo and sensible flats, but the leather-jacketed girl beside her with features so exactly matched they could have come from a mirror was unmistakably present in a way that demanded attention as much as the tight red dress and laced-up over-the-knee boots did. _You shouldn’t pry into Alice’s head like that,_ the girl in the leather jacket told her silently, snapping the words off like a slap with an ivory cane. _Who she fucks is her business._

Jaw clenching under the cumulative stress, Emma took a small, indignant step backwards. _And you are doing precisely what now?_

 _Inspecting the new girl,_ the mouthy redhead responded. _So far, baby, I’m not impressed._

“Hello, Alice,” Scott broke in quietly, squeezing the brunette’s hand, then nodded to the more proper of the two redheads. “You look good, Jeanie. Phoenix and Emma fighting already?”

 _None of your business,_ Emma and the tart simultaneously snapped at Mister Summers.

Emma glared.

Phoenix flipped the bird at both teachers.

Jean sighed, which seemed to be answer enough for Scott. “Miss Frost, it’s nice to meet you,” she greeted. _Sorry about Phoenix. She’s like that._

A fresh smile pasted to her face, Emma nodded. “So, Jean, are you a student here?”

 _Not anymore,_ Phoenix snorted, kicking her heels against the shoe rack by the door and then trotting over to the door to the sitting room to flop onto a convenient divan. _We graduated in June, and not a fucking minute too soon._

 _Oh thank god,_ Emma announced. _I feel a great deal of pity for your former teachers._

“Just graduated,” Jean answered aloud while throwing a very old-fashioned look after her sister. _Stop that. It’s rude to carry on conversations mind-blind people can’t hear._

_Rude? If you want rude, let me tell you what I’m going to do with John the moment I get him alone. I bet you’ll...._

“Charles,” Erika Lehnsherr Xavier said softly from the central hallway, a touch of ink still on her fingers from her paperwork and her muddy green eyes alight with tightly contained emotion.

“Erika.” Wheelchair and all, the man turned towards his wife as if he himself were made from metal. A  meaningful silence passed between them as she descended the stairs, and Emma did her best to not wonder what they were thinking. She settled on pondering Alice’s no doubt grisly fate once Magneto figured out her husband was unfaithful.

 _Don’t be stupid,_ Phoenix said from the divan, rolling her eyes upward as Erika knelt down to take her husband tightly in her arms without regard for what anyone around them might think. _She already knows - she’s always known. He couldn’t keep a secret from her if he tried. It’s Alice who doesn’t know._

Jean clicked across the marble floor towards the kitchen, throwing a glare at her twin. _Stop it. Weren’t you just lecturing Miss Frost on minding your own business?_

 _That’s her and I’m me,_ Phoenix retorted, as if the distinction was too obvious to be worth pointing out unprompted. _Besides, I don’t like her._

 _Which is no justification for your breach of confidence, Phoenix,_ Charles’ voice cut into the conversation much less gently than he had spoken before. _You still aren’t so old that I won’t put you in Time Out, young lady._

 _You could try,_ Phoenix snapped, then seemed to think better of it, because she sat up and looked at Xavier, still wrapped in the welcoming embrace of his wife, and dropped her eyes to the floor. _Fine. I’m sorry, Mister Xavier, sir, for running my mouth._ It was not the least sarcastic apology in the world, but it seemed at least to be genuine in spirit.

Emma added ‘Time Out’ to her list of things she needed to know more about, even if it sounded like she didn’t want to know more about it.

 _Ooh, enchiladas, gimme,_ Phoenix called to Jean. There was a pause, and then to Emma’s astonishment, the girl began to squirm in delight on the couch and hold her fingertips to her lips as though trying to keep any of the taste from escaping. _God, that’s good._

Scott brushed past Emma, seemingly ignoring the girl wriggling on the divan, and then promptly sat in it himself and propped his feet up on the Ottoman without disturbing Phoenix, who gave every appearance of squirming her way onto his lap.

Anyone else would have dropped their jaw to their knees, but Emma’s mouth falling open half an inch was an equivalent for the ever-collected Miss Frost.

Scott looked up. “What?” he asked her, visibly confused at her astonishment. “They’re going to be saying hello and settling him in for a while. You going to tell me excusing myself was rude, Miss Frost?”

Phoenix, meanwhile, had stopped the frantic enjoyment of whatever it was she’d been enjoying the moment before and pivoted herself around to straddle Scott’s lap and rest her head on his shoulder. _Jean,_ she called out, _you’re never going to guess where I am right now._

Shaking her head to clear it, Emma almost missed the squawk of outraged embarrassment from the kitchen. Scott turned his head toward the sound, looked around the front room as if searching for something, then gave Emma a particularly rueful smile. “What did she do this time?”

 _Only be totally brilliant, boy scout,_ Phoenix thought smugly, then rolled off his lap and patted Summers on the head without putting a hair out of place. _Thanks for the assist._ She winked back at Emma, did a little sashay through the big oak-framed couch, and vanished into mid-air.

“Plenty,” Emma answered at last. Sweeping a last, disbelieving look over the entryway and everyone in it, she began to drift towards the hallway. The stairs at the end of the wing were probably less occupied at the moment. “I have essays to read,” she added, distantly.

“Emma,” Scott said softly, his hidden eyes focused on her so intently that she could feel them without seeing them, “have you been down to Ridgefield yet?”

She stopped, paused, turned. “No.”

“There are a couple of places worth eating at,” he said in that same quiet, patient voice, “and you look like a woman who would like to get out of the house.”

“God, yes,” she muttered under her breath. Giving her colleague a genuine, if overwhelmed smile, she agreed. “That sounds lovely.”

“I thought it might.” He stood up, straightened his jacket, then gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Garage, twenty minutes, and don’t tell anyone?”

A small smile quirked Emma’s lips. “My goodness, Mister Summers, adults who make their own decisions about how to spend their time? What a terrible example for the children.”

“Which is why,” he replied, sotto voice and expression deadpan, “we simply won’t tell them.”

He eased past her, returning to the welcoming cluster of students and instructors that seemed to be gathering in the front room in increasing numbers now that the first rush of embraces had worn off, and raised his voice enough to carry over the non-inconsiderable din. “That’s enough of that, boys and girls! There will be plenty of time for catching up with Mister Xavier over dinner, I assure you, but for the moment, Miss Paige no doubt has work for him to do and the Professor would probably like a few minutes alone with him. Come on, now, get moving. If you don’t all have homework for my class, I can give you some!”

Even though she was still reeling from the series of bizarre introductions, Emma felt an entirely unwelcome surge of affection for her colleague. As inscrutable and annoying as he could be, Scott Summers knew what he was doing as a teacher and the field leader of the X-Men, and it would have been infuriating if it wasn’t so damned charming.

 _Of course,_ Emma mused as she returned to her room to freshen up, _there’s no reason it can’t be both._

* * *

Precisely twenty-one minutes later, Emma met Scott in the long, low Xavier garage. She passed the row of gleaming, leather-interior sedans with minimal attention until she spotted the brand-new garage door and the hastily boarded-over concrete support beam behind it. The empty parking space suggested a missing vehicle, and the telepath decided it must have something to do with the motorcycle John had destroyed.

A few spaces down, Scott was leaning against a black Lincoln Continental coupe, still dressed in his silk shirt and slacks from the day’s work. A blazer was held casually over one shoulder, his glasses a deep burgundy in the shadows of the garage. Straightening her jacket, Emma felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment; except for his mutation-suppressing eyewear, Scott was the spitting image of the dozens of rich young men who had tried to impress the telepath over the years.

_What next? The tennis trophy or the photo album of his overseas adventure?_

“Miss Frost,” he said, a hint of rueful amusement in his voice as he moved to open her door for her,  “you make a man feel underdressed.”

A smirk playing on her lips, she smoothly folded herself into the passenger seat, her white Jackie Onassis dress a stark contrast to the black leather. “You’re supposed to. It would be rude to look more elegant than I do.”

“I’ll remember that,” he retorted with a comfortable grin, and then shut her in and slipped around to the driver’s seat with only the briefest of stops at the garage door to open it. He settled in behind the wheel, handling the clutch and the gas so deftly that they glided out the door and down the drive to the main road with scarcely more than a throaty growl from the engine. Then, out of sight and earshot of the house, he flashed her that grin again and put his foot down.

No Lincoln she’d ever ridden in had ever moved quite so fast.

Ridgefield appeared far too soon, in Emma’s opinion, not that she would admit it. Nor would she admit to feeling energized, almost exhilarated, from the fast curves and rumbling engine. She would especially not admit to watching Scott’s firm, skilled hands on the wheel and gearshift, or to that having anything to do with the fact that she failed to notice what sort of place they had pulled into until after he had opened her door and helped her out.

Trattoria Viaggio had white tablecloths and black-suited waiters with towels on their arms, but that was where the resemblance between it and the kind of high-class, stuffy gourmet establishment she’d been expecting ended. The dining room was small, for one thing - barely bigger than her classroom - and made smaller by the racks of wine lining the walls. A patron could have reached behind herself and pulled out a bottle without even turning around. Tables were packed in as closely as would allow for movement, and a mural of a quaint Italian vineyard helped the place be something other than claustrophobic.

The waiters and maitre’D were all real Italians, for another, and quite genial. They gushed over Scott like a favorite nephew and their open admiration of Emma’s looks would have been annoying if they hadn’t been exuding goodwill so loudly.Then there was the clientele - financially comfortable but not wealthy. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves, the food and their companions, not trying to impress one another or make an important social connection.

Having been ushered to a table by the flock of happy Italians, Emma found herself smiling.

Scott settled down across from her, dropping his jacket over the back of his chair and then reaching up to loosen his tie, and the smile on his face reminded her of a student skipping out on his lessons without being caught. He waited while the young, fresh-faced waiter brought them bread and olive oil and two glasses of wine poured right there at the time, then picked up his glass and toasted Emma with thorough irreverence tinged by relief. “Here’s to clean getaways, Miss Frost.”

Emma raised her glass in kind. “My congratulations, Mister Summers.” The wine was a good merlot, warming her palette, and she was surprised by how much of the day’s tension was already melted away. Nice as it was to relax, however, it unfortunately allowed small details like the loosened blue silk of Scott’s tie to catch her attention.

She began to study the menu to correct this, only to have him chuckle under his breath and nearly ruin the effort. An interrogatory eyebrow failed to disturb him, and it was unspeakably frustrating that his laughing grin not only didn’t annoy her but actually charmed her. “I never use the menu,” he explained after she kept her blunted glare on him for a minute. “But suit yourself.”

“I do hope it’s not because you always order the same thing,” she challenged lightly. “I’m sure the poor staff would be quite frustrated if their darling Scott Summers ignored their talents.”

“I just tell them to bring me whatever they think is good,” he replied casually, spreading his hands as if to brush that challenge aside. “I think they figure it’s because I trust them to know what I like, but the truth is that I don’t speak Italian.”

He grinned, damn him, and she very resolutely was not charmed by it. At all.

The young waiter returned, quickly verified that Scott still ‘trusted’ them, and turned to Emma.

“L’anguilla, per favore, e un’insalata verde,” she told him smoothly, face innocently neutral.

“Sì, signorina.”

Scott watched, a comfortable smile on his face, and her opinion of him slid up another uncomfortable notch. Most men didn’t like the prospect of a woman who knew more than they did, especially if she showed it off in front of them, but Summers didn’t seem to mind. He waited until the waiter had vanished again, took another sip of his wine, then finally spoke up again. “‘Now I know we’re not in Kansas!’”

She gave him a dry look. “The fact that I can order in Italian is strange, but everything we just took a break from is normal?”

“Other way around,” he told her, undisturbed by the look. “I’ve lived there since I was thirteen, and it only gets stranger every year.”

Surprised yet again in an evening that was already setting records, she leaned forward slightly and smiled in spite of herself. “Is that when they adopted you?” _Damn._ She blamed the visibility of her interest on the wine.

“About a year after that,” he replied calmly, though the shift of his shoulders suggested he wasn’t as comfortable with the topic as he looked. “Formally, anyway. It was just Ororo, Heather and I at first, then Jean and Phoenix about the time they were making it official. Well, for the two of us. Ororo didn’t want it and the Greys actually have parents they can visit.”

“I see.” Emma studied his face, unsurprised that his mental shielding had become even tougher and more opaque than normal. Wondering if she would ever see him lose his cool, she smiled disarmingly. “Do you expect the strangeness to increase linearly or exponentially? Is there any plateau in sight?”

“None that I can see,” he replied, relaxing a little more as the topic moved back to the school and away from himself. “I’d say that it’ll be linear, except that now we have a Russian boy who turns into living metal and a new teacher who’s probably worth more than the Treasury when she feels like it. Exponential is looking like a better bet all the time.”

“I estimate that I’m about a million point one carats,” she replied with the hint of a smile on her face. “So about a third of the federal budget.”

“Only a third,” Scott replied dismissively, though the edges of his mouth twitched. “Hardly worth the effort of finding a buyer.”

“You even think about trying it, Summers,” she noted over a leisurely moment of dipping bread in oil, “and they’ll need a buyer for your vital organs.”

“Duly noted, Miss Frost,” he chuckled at last, leaning back in his chair and having some bread of his own. “I’m sure even twice that value wouldn’t be worth losing the pleasure of your company, anyway.”

The waiter arrived with their food as she was rolling her eyes.

After fussing over the two mutants like a mother hen, including an on-the-house pair of pinot grigios, the waiter left, smiling meaningfully at Scott in a way Emma didn’t quite like. Her ire was forgotten immediately as she took a bite of her seafood in a buttery white-wine sauce. She closed her eyes, savoring it deeply, and swallowed with a tiny sigh of pleasure.

When she opened her eyes again, Scott was applying himself to his own spaghetti and meatballs in what seemed to be a heavy garlic marinara with an unusual degree of determined focus, his eyes fixed rather firmly on his food. His shielding was flexing in a way that suggested a very interesting internal struggle. She very deliberately did not push, wondering how long her resolve would last.

Smiling only a bit knowingly, she pointed with her fork. “This is wonderful. You should try some.”

“Um,” he said, wiping his lips with a napkin, then carefully extended his fork and rolled up a few strands of linguini and a chunk of seafood before taking the whole lot off the tines with a quick bite. He chewed it for a minute or two, seemingly in contemplation, then swallowed it. “Not bad,” he concluded. “What is it?”

“Eel,” Emma replied conversationally, carefully watching him from under her lashes. “It’s one of my favorites.”

He looked at her for a moment, fork still in hand and expression utterly nonplussed, then ostentatiously reached over and took another bite for himself, making a point to chew and swallow it smoothly. “Not bad at all,” he finally pronounced in an equally conversational tone. “I’ll have to convince them to give me some next time I’m here.”

With a dry smile and nod of acknowledgement, Emma raised her glass. “To expanding your horizons, Mister Summers.”

“Good to have such an effective teacher, Miss Frost.” He raised his own glass to hers, tapped them together, then took a long swallow before taking up his fork again. “May I propose a truce until we finish eating?”

Emma placed her glass down with a graceful hand and mock seriousness. “I accept.”

They addressed themselves to the meal in a silence that was at first merely tolerable, then comfortable, then disconcertingly playful. He seemed to take pleasure in carrying on with first the pasta and then the chocolate cake for dessert in such an enthusiastic fashion that it was actually hard not to throw a quip at him for it, and when she retaliated by making her own enjoyment of the tira misu entirely clear, he actually blushed almost as sharp a red as his glasses.

At that point, she was torn between ruining the evening with a cold dismissal and ruining her composure by making their professional relationship distinctly more personal. Later, she would realize that the professionalism between them had lasted about five minutes and had been long dead by the time they visited Trattoria Viaggio.

He fielded the check from the waiter smoothly, tucked a few bills into it and then stood up, throwing his coat over one arm before offering her his hand. He might have said something, then, but didn’t - only watched her from behind those ruby-lensed spectacles and waited.

She hesitated. Those damn glasses and shield. _I finally want to know what a man is thinking and the bastard doesn’t have the dignity to be readable._

She stood gracefully, still trying to gauge him, and deliberately took his warm, rough hand. She thought there may have been a hastily-muffled cheer from the waiters, but the wine and Scott’s ridiculous effect on her was making it hard to pay attention. His smile was easy enough to notice though - warm and private, as if they were alone in the damned room. He walked her through the tightly-packed tables to the door, held it open for her, then followed her out to the car with his jacket over his shoulder and the hidden weight of his eyes burning into her back in a way that certainty felt more literal than it was.

She turned, found him closer than was comfortable, and was caught again between the impulses to get away and step forward. She was still, thank God, possessed of her dignity, and looked him steadily in the eyes she couldn't see. “Thank you, Mister Summers, for a lovely evening.”

“It was my pleasure, Miss Frost,” he told her politely, though his voice had deepened in a way that had very little to do with pleasantries. Then he reached up and brushed those rough fingertips along the curve of her jaw, the edges of his mouth curling up faintly, and went on as though musing to himself instead of speaking to her. “You’re a grown, spirited woman and if you don’t care for me, I imagine I’ll be on the ground in a moment, but I just don’t think it scares me. Just be careful of the glasses.”

Then he leaned down and kissed her, his other arm going around her waist so that his jacket pressed into the small of her back, and then Emma was lost in the heat of his mouth and the boiling magma of the mind that had overflown and melted the armor he had so carefully maintained. The fury of his desire for her stormed through them both as she grabbed his muscular shoulders and pulled herself up the last two inches between them, her own passion already higher than she could remember it being and quickly tangling itself with his. Her aggression and the feel of her body against his sparked a fresh torrent of heat, his other hand coming down from her jaw to her hip as he lifted her bodily onto the hood of the car, and even five minutes ago Emma would have sworn that Scott Summers was not the kind of man who would ever be two sets of clothes away from having sex on a car. She would have sworn she wasn’t that kind of woman, either, but at the moment she didn’t care. His body and mind felt too good against hers for her to care about much of anything else at the moment, and it was only because neither of them had mutated to go without oxygen that they eventually broke apart, breathing hard, one of his hands sliding up at once to check that his glasses were still on his face. Then he started to grin, a boyishly charming expression that hardly matched the burning storm of desire in his head, and leaned forward to murmur in her ear without releasing his grip on her waist. “To expanding our horizons, Emma. Though may I suggest we take the car up the road a ways?”

Her glare helped to cool him down a little. “I can’t believe such an irritating man is so attractive,” she whispered fiercely, smoothing her skirt down far enough to stop them from being arrested. At the same time she tried to remember if she still had condoms in her purse.

“It’s a curse,” he replied, unruffled, as he ran a light hand up the line of her back. “But that didn’t sound like a no.”

Pushing him back far enough for her to get off the hood, she pulled him down into another kiss by means of a fist in his tie. _No, you bastard, it isn’t._

He laughed into her mind more than into her mouth, busy as he was with kissing her breath out of her, and got the car door open behind her smoothly enough that when her knees finally did follow through on their threat to give out, he got her down into the passenger seat with a minimum of indignity. Then he ran a fingertip over her jaw, smiling at what his mind told her was her thoroughly ruined makeup, and closed the door before starting around the front of the car to get inside himself.

She was satisfied, after a brief wince on behalf of the transmission, that she’d managed to rattle him enough to make him too heavy on the clutch. Dignity assuaged for the moment, she set about checking her purse.

“Emma,” he said in a conversational tone somewhat spoiled by the rough-edged sound of his breathing, “just for the record, this isn’t normally what I expect from a first date.”

“Your virtue is noted,” she answered, her own voice too breathy to even pretend to be decent. “Is that a complaint?”

“More like a compliment,” he chuckled down in his throat. “I don’t think my ‘virtue’ had a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“No, probably not.” She smirked wickedly, running her fingers over a strip of foil-wrapped condoms at the bottom of her purse and suppressing the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl with relief and excitement. If what she could see in Scott’s mind was any indication, that might come later, but damned if she’d give it away now.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this chapter: Descriptions of group-focused violence (mutantphobia?), brief gaslighting

**Westchester : September 22, 1973**

Jean half-awoke to sunlight in her eyes, an intrusion that motivated her to pull the sheet up over her head and burrow further into her pillow. Ignoring the world with vigor, she had almost succeeded in drifting back into a deep sleep when she realized that if the sun was streaming through the hotel windows she must surely be late for whichever breakfast meeting or tour or interview Mister Xavier had scheduled for the day.

One hand held up to block the glare, she was sitting up before she realized that the light was reflected from her own vanity mirror, not a hotel window. The old familiar nicks and moisture- rings only emphasized the strangeness of being disoriented in her own room. The feeling wasn’t helped by the eternally-young kittens staring out at her with their huge eyes just as they’d done for years.

The only relief was the Cat Stevens poster she’d picked up during the trip and hung next to the kittens last night. Even fully awake the sameness of home had threatened to wash away the trip and all her experiences. All the ways she’d grown. Maybe she’d take down the kittens. Maybe she and Phoenix could repaint the room, assuming they could agree on a color.

 _Red and black,_ her sister piped up sleepily from the back of her head. _Like that Harley we saw in San Fran. That was cool._

 _I’m not sleeping inside a hot rod,_ Jean sighed, giving up on that particular idea. _Go back to sleep, sis._

 _Loser,_ the reply came, and then the image of the girl who wore her face but whose eyes burned like fire settling back into their bed and tucking the blanket over her in a fashion that Jean couldn’t help envying.

Rolling her eyes affectionately, Jean began to dress. She’d unpacked all of her own clothes and put them away neatly in her wardrobe, placed her bottle of naturally-made, lavender-scented lotion from Portland on her vanity, and left the toiletries she and Phoenix shared in the bathroom. Phoenix’s clothes, by contrast, were strewn over her side of the room or still wadded up in the suitcase along with her souvenirs.

Being a Saturday, Jean took her time in showering, dressing, and arranging her wet hair in a French braid. It would keep it out of her way during the afternoon training session and brush out into pretty waves tomorrow.

Stepping out into the oak-paneled hallway, she shut the door behind her and stretched her mind out. _Good morning, Mister Xavier._

A measured surge of warm affection surrounded her like an embrace. _Good morning, dear. Sleep well?_

She returned the gesture, smiling as she descended the magnificent central staircase. _Very. I’m looking forward to breakfast_. There were no smells from the kitchen, but Jean had never minded cooking for herself. Besides, the old grandfather clock in the marble entryway told her that it was nearly ten.

_Don’t bother with the kitchen, love. We’ve a hot breakfast out in the garden._

At her wordless question, Charles responded with amusement and a complicated undercurrent of weariness, hope and foreboding. _I’m boring everyone with the news we gathered while they’re too busy eating to escape._

 _Of course they aren’t bored,_ Jean replied with a shake of her head. _Well, most of them._

He answered with the mental equivalent of a snort. _Cheeky. Now come out and get your lecture omelette._

Still shaking her head, Jean turned at the foot of the stairs toward the long hallway that would lead to the broad veranda overlooking the garden and nearly walked into Joanna Cargill coming the other way. In the buzz of excitement outside, she’d lost track of the inside of the house, and the Chicago girl’s usual mental noise was so muffled that she actually had to focus to hear it.

“Jet-lagged, Two-fer?” Six foot even and built (as John was prone to say admiringly) like a brick house, Joanna loomed over Jean even doing something as innocuous as holding a book in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other. Her choice in fashion didn’t help - she shared Heather’s fondness for cornrow braids, wore her hair down past her shoulders and beaded so that it jangled, but favored black jeans and a matching jacket that Ororo disapprovingly described as ‘thuggish’ in her own head when she thought no one was listening. The effect was certainly intimidating enough, even for someone who’d been a classmate of hers for over a year.

Still, Jean could throw the other girl across the room without lifting a finger, and so they had become friendly and oddly comfortable around one another. Joanna’s refusal to tiptoe around the Greys’ shared body was just one the things Jean liked about her, and Joanna found Jean’s lack of skittishness equally reassuring. _Country girl,_ she liked to call her, or sometimes _Upstate_ and _Sandra Dee,_ but Jean was about as fine a model of straight white human society as one was likely to meet and the fact that Jean accepted her just as she was meant something to Joanna that went down a lot deeper than intellectual and ideological opinion.

The telepath smiled. “Maybe I just felt like sleeping in.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be up at the crack of dawn, busting your white ass over your books?” In the year she’d been at the Xavier School for the Gifted, determined effort by Professor Xavier and Ororo had done a great deal to straighten out Joanna’s grammar, but they hadn’t been able to do a thing to convince her to drop her natural fondness for profanity. Jean suspected, though couldn’t prove, that the headmistress actually found their failure in that regard pleasing. _Joanna is a girl of original force,_ Jean had mentally overheard her telling Scott one night, _as a woman with that kind of strength ought to be._

Jean shook her head. “Except for training this afternoon, we have a whole weekend off. I hardly know what to do with myself. Except breakfast,” she amended, anticipation creeping into her voice. “They still have omelets out there. And cinnamon rolls. Join me?”

“Already ate.” Joanna grinned comfortably, a hint of self-awareness to it at how rarely she refused an extra meal. “Besides, I’ve got to see a man about a thing.”

Discreetly turning her mental gaze away, Jean grinned back. “Don’t tell him you’re putting him above food. He’ll be insufferable.”

“John Wayne’s always insufferable,” Joanna retorted. “Wouldn’t like him if he wasn’t. Enjoy your breakfast, country girl, and give Mister Summers a good looking over for me.”

Heat rose to Jean’s cheeks as she laughed. “Have fun, Jo, but not too much fun. The architecture can’t take it.” _I am so glad,_ Jean thought privately, _that I don’t have to worry about him bruising us anymore._

 _The bruising was fun,_ Phoenix grumbled from the back of her head, though the sleepy red-gold eyes were more wistful than angry. That hadn’t been true four months ago, when they’d first gotten the letter from John telling her that he’d started seeing - which meant fucking, as far as Phoenix was concerned - Joanna Cargill. She and John had never pretended to be in it for anything but a good time, much less exclusive rights to the rest of their lives, but for a while Phoenix had taken the feeling of being replaced badly. Fortunately, they’d been well out of the state by that time, and ten weeks straight of availing herself of every attractive man that struck her fancy and could be persuaded to say yes had gone a long way toward working the anger out of her system. That it was Joanna was a mixed blessing - she and Phoenix had never quite seemed to make up their minds if they were the best of friends or blood enemies - but somehow that had helped take the sting out of things as well. _At least,_ Phoenix had finally admitted while staring up at their Vancouver hotel room three weeks ago, _he didn’t pick some lame-ass white girl who’d expect him to carry her books._

It had been dryly fun for Jean to point out that Phoenix was, in fact, white herself, and there had been an uncomfortable conversation that ended in both Greys having a better understanding of (and terminology for) the socio-economic groups with which they respectively identified. Much as she detested its prejudices, Jean liked the quiet manners and refined tastes of the white, Protestant New Englanders that Phoenix couldn’t stand, while all the women Phoenix looked up to were black or Jewish.  

Opening the heavy oak door, Jean stepped into the grass-scented shade of the veranda. The group gathered in and around the central gazebo held almost the entire student body of the school. Except for Professor Xavier, who was doubtless working in her office or the garage, all of the teachers were there as well. Even Miss Frost, the new teacher who Phoenix had made such a show of rattling on their first meeting, had a place right up front.

Behind the gathering was a catering table, and Jean helped herself to eggs, bacon, a little fruit salad, and the biggest remaining cinnamon roll. Mister Xavier was at the front of the group, Alice helpfully positioned at his elbow with the notes he was speaking from, but what had obviously been intended as a more formal presentation had fallen off into something of an extended group conversation, with questions popping up from the audience of students in small legions and Mister Xavier determined to answer every one of them fully.

 _You’re going to be out here for hours if you keep that up,_ Jean thought at him while enjoying her food.

 _Well,_ his rueful answer came back to her as he launched into an impromptu explanation of the state of mutant rights legislation in Washington for the benefit of the Beaubier twins, _at least there will be plenty of punch and lemonade._

Jean grinned around her cinnamon roll. _Should I call out for lunch? Maybe arrange an intermission?_

Mister Xavier didn’t choose to answer her quips, but he did turn smiling eyes on her for a moment during his elaboration on the state of the Lewis-Hamilton Education Bill and its implications for mutant education rights. Then Heather appeared next to Jean so suddenly that only familiarity prevented it from being completely startling, and the telepath used her free arm to hug her foster sister.

 _Missed you,_ Jean sent. _How have you been, Fidget?_

 _Unemployed,_ Heather groused as she reached down to steal a strip of bacon from Jean’s plate. _Here I stand, summa cum laude from Georgetown in Forensic Science and Criminology, and have I had a word back from the FBI about my application? A call? An interview? Not a bit. You’d almost think they didn’t want me to work for them._

Jean’s features settled into a subtle expression of concern. _Ororo said you told them you were a mutant in the application._

 _Technically,_ Heather replied calmly as she cleaned the bacon grease from her fingers with a napkin snatched from the buffet, ignoring the carefully folded gold and purple handkerchiefs peeking out of the front left pocket of her wide-legged wool slacks, _I told them that I was treasurer of the Georgetown chapter of Mutants and Humans United. Which I suppose probably amounts to the same thing._

Jean frowned and stabbed her eggs. _They,_ she thought, loading the word with a number of unflattering connotations, _are incredibly stupid for not snatching you up. Cold pragmatism alone demands that they hire skilled mutants, and soon._

 _Cold pragmatism seems not to be a speciality of the United States government at this particular moment,_ Heather said with a sigh and a small, angry flick of her hand. _They can pass two major civil rights bills in a decade for the American Negro, but they can’t break up the ghettos and they won’t do a damn thing for us except argue. You hear they tried to put some of their people into the Watch? Flatscans, no less._

Jean flinched a little at the slur, but couldn’t bring herself to scold Heather. Being denied your dream job on the basis of your DNA would drive anyone to swearing. _Now that’s just insulting. They think we’re stupid enough not to notice a ‘mutant’ with no mutations?_ The bacon was cold by now, but the telepath ate it anyway, vaguely watching the discussion. The topic seemed to have moved to the pro- and anti-mutant demonstrations in various cities over the summer.

 _They think we’re stupid enough not to know how to warm tea,_ Heather bit off with a mental snort. _Most of them, anyway._ She looked up at the mention of the riot in Saint Louis three months ago, winced, then shook her head. _I’m glad you weren’t here for that one, Jeanie. It was bad._

 _I know the students at home almost started their own riot and were only saved by Doug assigning a lot of pre-emptive spring cleaning._ She smiled a little at how much the students must have complained, but quickly sobered. _The mission was that bad?_

Heather opened the sense memory out of its metaphorical box, and Jean was suddenly standing in the middle of a street lined with buildings burning as bright as torches and shattered police cars flipped and broken against them. Advancing up the street toward her came a solid square of armored police bearing shields, their flanks protected by mounted officers wielding batons, while behind her loomed a mob of perhaps twenty-five shouting, furious mutants who seemed ready to take the entire block down around them.

 _It was that bad,_ Heather thought quietly.

 _God,_ Jean remarked, looking at the scene from behind transparent mental shields, _it looks more like a war zone than a riot._

_If we’d been earlier, it wouldn’t have been so bad. It started out peaceful - the police were trying to shut down a mutant bar, the locals didn’t like that, the head of the local MHU turned out to try to calm everyone down. Apparently, some members of the Watch were in the crowd. The police didn’t like being blocked, and they doubly didn’t like being talked back to, and when the girl from MHU persisted in trying to get someone senior to talk to - she was only twenty-five, nice girl, apparently could make the prettiest little light sculptures - one of the cops busted her head right open with his baton._

Even behind her shields, even though her read of Heather’s memory had told her it was coming, Jean felt the other’s rage and grief almost as strongly as the hollow pit of despair in her stomach. The empty plate was discarded in the garbage, and she wiped her eyes several times with slender fingers.

 _Even that might not have been so bad - the Watch tore some cars up and drove the police back, but no more than that - except that her lover was in the crowd. Her lover who happened to be an extremely powerful pyrokinetic._ Helen’s smile was very, very grim.

 _Thus everything on fire._ Clamping down on the buzz of conflicting emotions filling her mind, Jean crossed her arms to keep from wringing her hands. _Phoenix and I could have held everyone back,_ she thought plaintively. _Nobody had to die_.

Mister Xavier kept answering questions, but shifted subtly in his foster-daughters’ direction. Jean could tell he had picked up on their agitation, or Heather’s, anyway. Happy for the distraction, the telepath nudged the first layer of Heather’s shields up. To Jean’s relief, the time-bender held them in place.

 _The Boss ripped all the water mains open, which sorted the fire out right quick, and Kurt had the presence of mind to ‘port in behind the kid with flames glowing from his eyes and clock him in the back of the head. The Watch got everyone off the street in good order once Scott and the Boss told them to, and then we just had to convince the cops to call it a day._ Heather smiled a little as they drew the mental shielding around them like a blanket and moved away from the group together, walking aimlessly through the fall splendor of the garden. _The Mayor apparently decided to slap a lid on the whole thing to avoid having it leak what happened to Katarina - that was the MHU girl’s name - and we got off pretty lightly. All things considered._

Jean sighed, wishing that murders and city-block-wide fires weren’t what the X-Men thought of as ‘getting off lightly.’ Knowing that Heather felt the same just made it worse. _I’m glad our team got home safely,_ she sent. _Tell me there’s more good news._

_The kid’s in Topeka now. Learning how to do what he does better, and how not to lose it. Katarina was the only one of our people who died, civilian casualties were injuries-only, and the property damage was written off as not our fault thanks to some good work by the local MHU. Also, none of the cops ended up worse than bruised, which at least some people would call good news._

_I guess it looked worse than it was._ With one hand Jean brushed away a stray leaf that had fallen onto her light blue denim jacket. _How is John adapting to the team?_

“Pretty well,” Heather said aloud, feeling free to speak now that they were out of easy earshot of the gazebo. “At least, when he can keep hold of his urge to be a big damn hero. Scott’s going to have to break him of that before I really feel good taking him out, but so far he’s been solid. Not a problem it looks like we’re going to have with Miss Frost, that’s for damn sure.”

Jean missed a step. “She’s on the team? Phoenix was so...unflattering in her opinion.”

“She’s on the team. The Boss picked her for that, first and foremost. From what I’ve seen so far, she’s got the whole package on that front.” Heather’s emotions were approving, if a little guarded. “No lack of guts, that’s for sure.”

 _Not the only way she’s got the ‘whole package,’_ Phoenix sneered from what sounded for all the world like the top of one of the hedgerows.

Jabbing her sister with a mental elbow, Jean smirked. _Jealous, sis? Sorry we aren’t better endowed?_

 _Shut up,_ Phoenix grumbled. _At least we don’t look like goddam Tiffany’s Barbie._

Jean couldn’t suppress a snicker. Heather arched an eyebrow.

“A mean nickname I’m sure Phoenix will tell you at some point,” Jean demurred. “I’m not going to repeat her bad behavior, even if I do find it funny.”

“Spoilsport,” Heather retorted, smiling. “How about the three of us go down to the armory, gear up and do you a refresher course before the main event? Bet you’re both rusty.”

_Rusty, my ass! I’ll show her rusty all up and down the goddamn Danger Room._

With a grin and an eye-roll, Jean accepted and followed Heather back into the house.

* * *

“Phoenix,” Heather inquired through the radio, her tone more gently bemused than anything else, “would you mind letting me down? I think we’re about to have guests.”

“I don’t know. You look pretty good up there.” Hands resting on her armored hips, Phoenix grinned wickedly, pleased with the expression even if Heather couldn’t see it through the helmet. “Maybe we can use you for a piñata.”

 _And maybe I’ll tell her about all the times you ‘borrowed’ her car,_ Jean rebuffed her sister. _Or when you took her student ID and pretended to be her so you could get on campus and have private time with that frat boy._

“Rat,” her sister retorted aloud, but extended her hand and - with a needlessly grand gesture of the type she was entirely too fond of - lowered Heather from the ceiling and set her lightly on her own feet. “There. Happy?”

“Or passing for it,” Heather retorted, checking the straps that held her back-and-breast bulletproof armor in place over the kevlar and spandex bodysuit, then the armored boots and shoulder and arm plating. “We ought to figure out a better way to hold these things together if we’re going to be getting tossed around in the air like that.”

“Tell the Beast,” Phoenix replied, turning a slow pirouette and looking down to admire the flame-red accents on her own black body armor. “If he can’t fix it, nobody can.”

 _Ugh._ Phoenix jumped at the sensation of having her ear flicked, hard, and her sister’s image appeared at the same instant with her own hands on her hips. _Uncle Hank is a person, not an animal,_ Jean glared.

 _I didn’t say he wasn’t,_ Phoenix objected. _Do I look like I’m sprouting feathers? It’s just a name, sis. Cool it._

Heather chose that moment to smack the back of her helmet firmly, and Phoenix’s hand came up to touch the back of her head and ran into the armored curve of the thing as well. “Hey!” she objected, maybe to the universe at large. “It was a joke! I make jokes. It’s charming!”

“‘Charming.’” Kurt’s softly-accented voice carried well through the Danger Room even though he wasn’t speaking particularly loudly from the door. “Please, Tempo, could you explain this word to me? I thought I knew it, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“Charming,” Heather enunciated clearly over the speakers in her helmet. “Adjective. Pleasant or attractive. When applied to a person or an attitude: polite, friendly, likeable.”

Expression brightening, Kurt nodded. “Ah, thank you. I was correct after all.” A rush of smoke and noise, and he was standing in front of Phoenix with a mock-stern expression. “Tsk, Phoenix, you must pay more attention to your studies. Forgetting a word like that.”

“Smug, pointy-eared son of a bitch elf,” she retorted, wrapping armored arms around his shoulders and hugging him with an affection out of keeping with her tone. “It’s good to see you, too.”

He returned the embrace warmly, smile showing white teeth. “And you as well, _löwin_.” Leaning back, one hand still on her arm, he reached up to tap the armored curve of her visor. “But elves are tall and pale and have no tails, poor things. Everyone knows that.”

“I think Tolkien just tidied them up for popular consumption,” Phoenix retorted, grinning back just as toothily as she reached up to pull her helmet off and give him a kiss on the cheek. “They totally would look cooler in blue, and who wouldn’t want a tail?”

Kurt’s musical laugh filled the room. “The teleportation would have saved some time, I think.”

“And we wouldn’t have had to read about all that _walking_ ,” Emma agreed with disdain. Even wearing back and breast body armor didn’t diminish Miss Frost’s elegance of movement and carriage, nor take the edge from her icy demeanor. _I could wipe that smug look from her face,_ Phoenix grumbled, and Jean didn’t argue about the accuracy of her sister’s assessment or her desired course of action.

“You read the Lord of the Rings, Miss Frost?” Scott put in, still adjusting his heavily armored gloves but with his face hidden behind the smooth, intimidating curve of his helmet and the ruby gleam of his visor. Neither that nor the subtle distortion of his voice through the speakers did much to hide the boyish pleasure in his voice. “How very plebeian of you. Counter-cultural, even. Next thing you know, you’ll be burning your bras in Berkley.”

“Really? Can I watch?” John Proudstar tried to pass his question off as a joke as he followed his elders into the Danger Room, but it would have worked better if he’d actually had his helmet on already when he tried. “Ow!” he objected a moment later, rubbing his bare upper arm and glaring at the young woman who’d just punched him. “You know that hurts, dammit!”

“You deserved it,” Joanna replied with a smirk as she tossed her own helmet up in the air and then caught it. “Punk.”

Safely behind her field of vision, John twisted his face into a mocking scold and mouthed her words to the air.

Jean giggled as she took control of the body and turned to greet and hug the teleporter herself. “I missed you, Kurt. It’s good to be back.”

“And you as well, _lieblich_.” The sound of footsteps coming down the corridor from the elevator caught him with his mouth open to say more. He shrugged with a smile. “Well, we will talk later, Jean. The boss is here.”

There was a quiet that always came over the Danger Room when Magneto entered it which was like nothing else Jean had ever experienced, a kind of taut anticipation that silenced speech and put metal in one’s spine. It was Magneto that she said in her own thoughts, and not Miss Lehnsherr or Professor Xavier - there was something indefinably different about the woman who had done so much to raise Scott, Jean, Heather and Ororo once she put on the helmet that silenced her thoughts into a cold, absent void that no telepath could touch and the armor that encased her beneath the metallic mesh of her cloak. A hard, unyielding ruthlessness that she showed at no other time.

“Gear and positions, my X-men,” she said in the metallic, electronically distorted growl that Scott and Hank had helped her fine-tune over the years to mask her own vocal cadence. “We have a great deal of work to do today.”

“What’s the parameter, ma’am?” Scott’s mind shifted under his shields, taking a harder and more practical edge that Jean recognized from her handful of real trips into the field. He was addressing Magneto as Cyclops now, field leader of the X-men to their mentor and founder, and everyone in the room shifted their mental stance in response.

“That is very simple,” she told him in reply, lifting away from the floor on an invisible current of magnetic force and turning in the air to survey them as a body. “You will give me your best efforts to eliminate me as a hostile actor without causing serious injury, and I will do the same. If any of you are still standing when we finish the exercise, you will have been successful.”

Jean grit her teeth, settling lower into her ready stance. The last time they’d done this particular exercise, Magneto had won in a handful of minutes - it had actually been embarrassing. _The ‘Thunderbird missile’ was playing dirty,_ Phoenix muttered in the back of her head, ruefully admiring. _Though watching John apologize for a week was awesome._

Making a show of looking around the X-Men, Emma scoffed. “Only one of us? Do we need that much of a handicap?”

“Emma,” Cyclops told her in a dry, hard voice, “you have no idea.”

“Oh, please,” Emma started, equally dry, “surely she isn’t that--”

An old-fashioned free weight disk - Jean had just enough time to see the 50 pound sign on it - slammed into the back of Emma’s body armor and sent the blonde flying through the air. Everyone else hit the floor, fast, which was just about good enough to dodge the matching hail of improvised disci that went whipping by over their heads.

“Your opponent,” Magneto observed calmly in that resonant growl, “will not wait for you to be ready.”

 _Now that’s comedy,_ Phoenix grinned in the back of Jean’s head. _Remember balancing the tent pole in Chicago?_

Jean nodded. _I grab, you throw?_ Over her head, flashes of red light were blazing by to be refracted in thundering booms against the walls of the room.

_Hold on tight and aim carefully, sis._

Surveying the scene, Jean waited through two deep breaths and threw up her hand. The flying weights froze in their tracks, hanging near the back walls of the room like tiny, oddly-proportioned flying saucers, and then went hurtling back over the heads of the X-men fast enough to generate the sharp rippling crack of a sequence of supersonic projectiles. Magneto threw up both gauntleted hands, parting them roughly, and the spray of weights bearing down on her crashed into the walls on either side of her.

It wasn’t a huge distraction, but it was enough. Cyclops hit her with an optic blast that knocked her out of the air, her boots grating on the floor as she magnetized them to stay upright, and then Thunderbird and Frenzy were on her in a rush, Tempo’s bullets rattling against the metal mesh of Erika’s cloak like steel-denting hail as the timeshifter brought both the team’s heavies in faster than even they could run. Armor and polarized magnetic fields stopped the first dozen blows, though Jean though she heard Magneto grunt in pain, and then the floor under her tore itself up and wrapped itself around both of the super-strong mutants hard enough to crush a normal human to death. Nightcrawler’s distinctive burst of black smoke blossomed behind Magneto, arms reaching to encircle her, but she held up a hand and caught him in mid-air to fling him at Tempo, both vanishing before the impact. Cyclops tried another optic blast, then had to throw himself flat again as Magneto reflected it back at him, and Phoenix grabbed a stray chunk of reinforced concrete from the torn-up floor to throw it at the magnetokinetic’s head.

The impact of having it boomeranged back at them, carrying most of the original force intact, was enough to knock all the air out of Jean’s lungs and leave them both gasping on the floor, armor or not.

 _That... idea... could have gone... better,_ Phoenix admitted.

“Was worth a shot,” Jean breathed out loud. _What else can we try?_

_Maybe we can shuck John out of that metal wrap she’s got him in. You know, sort of like cracking an.... Oh, blondie, you don’t wanna do that...._

Smug superiority or no, Jean winced in sympathy as Miss Frost dashed in towards Magneto, diamond glittering at her neck and wrists, arm already cocked back for a hard right cross.

Magneto plucked up one of her gift-wrapped students - Joanna, if Jean had kept track of them properly - and brought the whole package of metal and unnaturally tough teenager down on Miss Frost like a triphammer. Once, twice, three times, four, and the floor was actually starting to starr with cracks when Cyclops managed to get to his feet and throw an optic blast powerful enough to shear a tank in half at his mentor. Magneto brought both hands up, sliding back half a dozen paces as she refracted the concussive force around her, and Tempo and Nightcrawler both went sprawling as their cleverly timed wolfpack attack got them a bruising torrent of ruby light for their trouble.

He didn’t stop, though. Bracing a hand against the wall of the room, the other at the corner of his lens, he poured it on until the plating of the floor beneath her buckled and the scattered refraction was ripping plates of metal off the walls.

Hand instinctively held in front of her, Jean deflected the odd force beam, eyes wide and darting around the room for some way to make everything stop. She noticed that there were no longer metal objects flying around the room of their own accord, and she tried to get a glimpse of Magneto through the red light and distorted air shielding her.

 _Cyclops,_ she began, not sure exactly what she was asking for or why except that this was more than a little outside the bounds of normal practice, and then a chunk of iron from the wall over the door tore itself loose and smacked the man she was trying to reason with in the back of the head hard enough to throw him flat on his face and rattle his brain and his shields with equal force.

Still standing, though her cloak was ripped and torn in places and the walls around her looked as though they had been beaten with a thousand ball-pointed hammers, Erika Lensherr reached up and removed her helmet with one hand and said in a clear, carrying voice that would brook no disagreement, “I think that we shall have to postpone the remainder of this exercise until we find a more intact venue.”

Somewhere behind a large section of metal plating that had covered the walls, Jean heard someone snort. Probably Heather. Standing shakily, she turned to face John and Joanna’s prisons, looking strangely like huge metal dumplings.

Joanna punched a hand out through the side of hers, waggled it in the air for a moment, then swore into her radio. “I don’t think this is gonna work.”

Phoenix’s laugh brought a hint of a smile to Jean’s face. The girl reached out with both hands close together, then pulled them apart, the sheet metal groaning as it unfolded from around Joanna. The big girl smiled lopsidedly behind her helmet, her mind communicating a mix of angry embarrassment and rueful amusement, and she threw the Greys a fair impression of a military salute as she finally got to her feet.

Jean turned to do the same for John’s, and then it bounced up into the air like it was on springs and it was all she could do for a moment to keep it from banging off the ceiling and crashing down again. She’d pushed it clear of anyone below when she heard the first wave of unleashed rage, felt the electric chill of lightning about to strike, and slammed the door on Emma’s telepathy just before Miss Frost could drive all her considerable power against Erika’s unprotected mind. Spears of ice lanced through Jean’s skull as Emma turned her fury on the Greys, and the girl fell to her knees.

_Looks like your kind of fight, sis._

_Thought you’d never ask._ They stood up, one slow inch at a time as if pushing against the weight of a gale, and the latches of their helmet snapped off as it lifted away to give Phoenix the breathing room she always seemed to need. Her eyes were fire, now - Jean could see through Kurt’s eyes, through Heather’s and Joanna’s, and the surface of her irises seemed to dance with an inner gold and crimson light as her hands flexed, tightened, then slammed together in a forceful clap that echoed off the walls of the room.

Diamond, it turned out, made a funny ringing chime when you hit it hard enough. Miss Frost stumbled, went to one knee, and Phoenix parted her hands and paused, letting them stay a few inches apart. “Ready to stay down, or shall we do another?”

“Another, dear?” Miss Frost asked her politely, holding a sugar cube over the girl’s tea. “I have more than enough.” They were in the formal parlor of the mansion, a silver tea set arrayed on the coffee table, a violin piece playing on the turntable. It was pleasantly boring: the various knick-knacks Phoenix had known her whole life were in their display cases, the plush Turkish rug swirled with the right patterns, the wall paneling glowing with polish. Still, something felt subtly wrong.

“No, thank you,” she replied, arching an eyebrow primly. “But Jean will have some. She likes her tea sweet.”

With a quizzical look, the blonde plunked two cubes into the teacup, then returned the dish to the tray. “You shouldn’t talk about yourself in the third person, Jean,” Miss Frost _tsked_. “It’s strange and off-putting.”

“I never talk about myself in the third person,” Phoenix objected. “And I told you I didn’t want any more sugar.” She glanced down, then made a face at the floral print party dress she was wearing. _You have no taste in clothes, sister._

The thought was met by an empty, choking silence.

“This again?” Emma asked, after taking a sip from her own cup. “There’s no one else, Jean. It’s just you.”

Icy, irrational fear clawed its way up Phoenix’s spine, and she threw the weight of her mind hard into that silence. _This isn’t funny, sis. Tell Schoolmistress Goldilocks you’re here, too._

No one responded. _Jean!_ She was screaming in her own head, into silence, and there were tears in her eyes as she drew her thoughts back and hurled them into that stillness like lightning into a pitch dark night. _Jean, you can’t go away. You can’t. How am I supposed to keep you safe if I don’t know where you are? JEAN?!_

She hit something, rebounded, hit it again. Smiled. The inside of her head was much smaller than she was used to. Which meant Jean was there, somewhere. Which meant the bitch sitting across from her....

Phoenix Grey stood up from the table, and the air around her caught fire. “Emma, dear,” she said in a mockery of the other woman’s voice, reaching out with everything she was to grip Frost’s mind in something very like an electrically-driven iron vise, “if you don’t tell me what you’ve done with my sister, I am going to burn you alive. Slowly. Painfully. For the rest of what’s left of your life.”

Miss Frost stood, threw her delicate cup to the floor, and began to grow, bigger and bigger until she was too tall for the ceiling. Her eyes stormed, and she opened her mouth to challenge the tiny girl.

 _ENOUGH._ Charles Xavier’s voice reverberated throughout the parlor, the whole mansion, the world like the disapproving tones of a not entirely benevolent deity. The teaset, the ceiling - all of it dissolved in a whirlwind flash of color and light, and then they were standing in a black and open space populated only by bookshelves, Emma Frost, both Greys, and Charles Xavier seated in a broad armchair with a book lying closed in his lap, one leg folded across the other and his suit arranged rather jauntily in a fashion long out of style. Later, the Greys would laugh over the fact that his thick, luxurious hair was also clearly from another era.

“Miss Frost. Jean. Phoenix,” he coldly greeted each in turn. “Care to explain why you were at each other’s throats?”

Phoenix gave him a hard look, moving to Jean and putting her arms tightly around her sister, feeling the subtle shaking in the green-eyed girl’s shoulders. “She got out of hand in training,” she reported after reassuring herself that Jean wasn’t hurt. “We decided to step in. End of story.”

Emma shifted, her pure white skirt-suit starkly contrasting the void all around them. “I thought the enemy wouldn’t wait for us to be ready. Or is Professor Lehnsherr the only one allowed to make unexpected attacks?”

“You were out for blood,” Jean murmured. “You were trying to hurt her as much as you could.”

His expression changed little, but there was something infinitely harder about his eyes on Emma. “While they are often difficult, painful and frustrating, Miss Frost, the training sessions are just that. They are practice. Every person in the Danger Room is your teammate. Ego is not to come into the equation. Is that clear?”

Staring hard and flat at him, she nodded once, crisply. “Fine.” Her eyes slid to Phoenix. “What about death threats?”

For a moment, Jean looked up and to the left, then turned wide eyes to her sister. “Phoenix! You didn’t!”

“I did and I would,” the girl with burning eyes told her, and then kissed her cheek. “Nobody hurts you, and nobody takes you away from me. Ever.”

Jean looked worried but said nothing, only held her sister in a tight embrace.

“Well,” Charles said into the silence, pinching the bridge of his nose, “As death threats are unacceptable, I’m afraid I have to send you ladies downstairs for a day or two. You are allowed books, music, and your journals from the trip. Miss Frost will bring you your meals. On time.”

Emma and Phoenix grimaced with remarkable similarity. Jean sighed. “Yes, Mister Xavier. Anything else?”

Running a hand through his lovely, imaginary hair, Charles sighed again. “Nothing you need to worry about, dears. Scott and my dear wife, on the other hand...” He shook his head. “Go and get the things you’ll want for the duration. I’ll send someone to check on you in half an hour.”

The Greys disappeared, leaving only Charles and Miss Frost in the library void.

Emma raised an eyebrow cooly. “More to say, Mister Xavier?”

His eyes, usually so warm and open, glinted with the hard promise of a missile silo. “Just this: Today’s is the only grace I am going to give you on this matter. If there is a next time--if you hurt, or even try to hurt, my wife or one of my students like this again, I will not be very civilized.”

And then with a twist, Emma was falling through blackness, all her efforts to escape or stop having no effect, until she landed with a start in her body, still facing the Greys as they walked towards the door, the Danger Room still occasionally shedding chunks of metal and concrete from the walls around them. In the corner John was emerging from his broken prison with Joanna helping him while Erika stood over Scott with her hand outstretched. He took it, pulling himself to his feet and shaking his head, and Erika’s voice - soft as it was - carried clearly in the relative quiet. “You did better than last time, but never let yourself concentrate so completely that you lose track of your surroundings. Your enemies will take advantage of it, and those you want to protect will suffer for it.”

“So I noticed.” Scott groaned softly, shaking his head as though to chase away the ringing. “I’m going to need water, asprin, a long bath and....”

He stopped, his hand going to his ear, and his voice went hard and calm again. “Shake it off, ladies and gentlemen. We’re on call.”

Erika’s eyes widened in surprise for the fraction of a second it took her to get control of them, and then her helmet rose from the floor where she had abandoned it and fitted itself over her features again. “Get them ready and choose your team,” she told Scott in that growling, synthetic voice. “I will prepare the jet.”

Groaning silently, Emma strode as smoothly as she could over to Scott. “Jet? You have a jet? Where are you keeping it?”

“Under the south lawn,” he replied, as if that were perfectly normal. “Think you can do anything about this headache?”

Eyes narrowing slightly, Emma brushed her power against Scott’s mind. The roiling conflict was there again - or still? - but after a moment she was able to find his pain throbbing in the back of his mind. She paused.

“I can turn it off for a while. The damage is still there, though, so that’s not usually a good idea. Think you can remember you’re mildly concussed and not do anything stupid?”

“I can manage the first,” he replied, and she could feel his smile. “The second may be a little trickier. Suit up for urban work, by the way. You’re coming.” He raised his voice enough to be heard. “Tempo, Phoenix, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird - strap up, too. There’s a Center in trouble, and we’re going to sort it out.”

“Summers...” Joanna began her objection, but didn’t get far. “Sit this one out, Frenzy,” he told her firmly. “But solid work today. Keep it up and you might bump John yet.”

“Like hell,” John objected. “I’ll take her six falls out of seven.” Then she punched him in the shoulder again, and he winced. “Ow!”

Getting over her surprise, Emma muted the part of Scott’s brain that was complaining about the concussion. It worried her a little, but at the moment there was nothing she could do. If she had several hours and good concentration, maybe.

The Greys reached the elevator first and glared defiance at Emma as she entered. Deliberately turning her back on them, she asked Tempo to explain more about the Xavier Centers.

 _Bitch,_ Phoenix thought loudly enough to carry.

Oh, yes. This was going to be a delightful little trip.


	8. Part Two - The Best Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Canon-typical violence, mind-rape

**Boston - September 22, 1973**

“This plan,” Logan growled into his radio as he ducked behind a heavy oak desk to avoid a painful-looking burst of projected plasma, “ain’t exactly working out the way I’d hoped.”

A tall black man in a cowboy hat and a flak jacket appeared silently next to him, crouched behind one of the room’s main pillars.. “Only one of my traps has gone off,” he sighed. “Widow said they were organized, but you’d think a blackout and explosions would get the panic going. Hate to see quality work go to waste.”

“No runners.” David North’s voice was as serene as ever, but there was a hint of a snap to the end of the words that suggested he might be finding his lack of business so far disappointing. “Perimeter is dead as last week’s news. Maybe they’ve all got a mole mutation. Digging to China.”

“Shut up and lemme think,” Logan growled, signaling another fire team of soldiers on loan from the Marines to shift around and try to flank the two mutants who’d barricaded the hallway out of their improvised foxhole.

It had seemed like a reasonably effective plan to start with: secure the entrances with explosives so any exodus would be staggered and slow, pick them off with long-range fire from the surrounding buildings, and sweep up the primary target in the confusion. Be in and out in five to ten minutes, before any of the local mutant thugs could show up to disrupt the operation.

It wasn’t working out that way, and that made him angry. Which wasn’t the best for his command judgement - he knew that. Giving in to the impulse to charge over there and rip up the offending mutant radicals shooting at him would just make that worse.

 _Think like an officer, dammit._ “Wraith,” Logan said in a growl that resonated all the way down into his chest, “get Deathstrike. Put her behind them. Hide behind her, if you have to.”

There was a longish pause, then Wraith was kneeling next to him again as if he’d never left. “Done,” the teleporter murmured, sounding distant. Logan bared his teeth in a grim little snarl. As long as Wraith followed orders he could think whatever he wanted, but Logan had never had much use for a man who wasn’t willing to do his killing with his own hands.

There was a brief, choked off cacophony of screams, then silence. “Move out,” Logan growled. “Try not to slip on the blood, boys.”

There was a fair bit of blood; more than enough, in fact, that for a minute or two it was all he could smell. Deathstrike stood over the bodies (Asian male, middling height, red hair; Caucasian female, blue hair, young), her long stiletto claws slowly retracting into her fingers, her blood-spattered face as expressionless as it always was. When Logan moved past her, she fell in behind him, and he flexed his hands without popping his claws just to feel them move in their sheaths. Two more for the body count - Stryker would approve. Logan wasn’t sure he gave much a damn one way or the other, himself. The primary target was the mission, and he’d relax when they had her.

“Boss,” North said into his ear, “I hear something. Some kind of plane, but the sound’s off - like it’s moving too slow. Don’t see it yet.”

There was a hollow, rushing sound of air collapsing into an empty space, then again, then again, and the hallway suddenly stank of brimstone. “Cover!” he snarled, smashing open a door and shoving himself against a desk. Deathstrike obeyed the order by ripping apart a chair and crouching beside the frame. Wraith had vanished.

So had three of his Marines.

“Folks?” Gambit’s voice conveyed a hint of panic that was quickly exceeding his ability to control it. “My backup are all down - twelve big strapping boys, all gunshot. They were fine two seconds ago, and then a big clap of noise, and now they’re down. Maybe time to go, _n'est-ce pas_?”

“Shut up, LeBeau,” Logan growled. “Wraith, hold position. Probably a trap.”

“Trap?” the Cajun asked a bit frantically. “ _Qu'est-ce que tu_ fucking _racontes_?”

“Shoot a bunch of guys. Leave one to call for help. Wait for the medics to show up. Bang.”

A string of muttered French cursing mixed with the radio static and sound of running footsteps before Gambit spoke up again. “I’ll meet you in the basement, boss.”

Logan closed his eyes, breathed the bloody air and tried to keep thinking. “North. Nothing?”

“Nothing but the low clouds and the lousy visibility, sir. If you want... wait. Got it. Plane just hanging in the air like it’s made of helium - black, forward-swept wings, big. No sign of people.” North’s voice was still calm, but Logan could hear him cycle the action of his rifle to check it - sign of nerves.

“They’re here,” Logan growled, popping his claws and cycling his radio to talk to the soldiers they’d brought with them. “Group up and converge on Point Bravo. The X-Men are on site. If it’s not us, shoot for the head.” He switched back to the team’s channel. “Wraith, what would it take for you to blow the doors on the basement?”

“Three minutes in which no one is shooting, clawing, or setting me on fire,” the explosives expert answered dryly from behind the desk against which Logan was currently leaning. _I oughtta put a bell on that guy....._ “Did you hear from Widow? Is she out of the picture?”

“Nothing yet. But the X-Men have at least one miltary-grade headjob, and Widow doesn’t have her inhibitor. Got yours on tight, cowboy?”

“Jesus,” Wraith breathed, hand checking the sleek band full of electronics hugging the back of his head and covering both ears. “You sure these things work, boss?”

“British fella checked them out, said they kept him out fine. ‘Course that’s just theory.” Logan eased to his feet and moved to the door, peering out into the clearing haze of black smoke that had appeared there from nowhere, and saw that what was left of his backup had followed orders and spread themselves out against the walls. That made it harder for a teleporter to get at them, according to Wraith, and that was good. “If you start gettin’ a sudden urge to try on dresses, we’ll know they don’t work so good.”

“Mm-hm,” Wraith replied in a flat tone. “I’ll keep it in mind. Are you gonna have someone cover me down there, Chuckles, or--”

One of the Marines cried out - a low rough grunt of pain - and then went flailing back through the air as if being dragged by a giant hand. A moment later, another did the same. Wraith disappeared. Men started to turn, trying to run or maybe just to find something to hold on to, and then a big armored shape loomed out of the dark and smashed one, two, three men into the walls hard enough to knock them limp about as fast as Logan could count.

 _Finally, something that ain’t officering._ Logan bared his teeth, lunged forward and led with his claws, Deathstrike behind him. They flanked the big guy, ripping up his armor with their claws and scratching skin underneath that seemed about as hard as a battleship’s plating, and took the worst shots he could dish out in reply. That was nothing like good - takin’ a hit from this big bastard would have smashed half a human’s bones to powder - but Deathstrike healed just as fast as he did. It wouldn’t be easy to keep them down.

“Excuse me,” a softly accented English voice murmured into his ear, “coming through.”

Then there was a searing piercing pain that went right through the back of his neck and dropped him to the ground, body limp, his brain screaming with raw red rage as he rolled over to stare up at the woman who’d just - at least momentarily - crippled him. Purple hair, trim figure in black leather, eye burning with violet energy, gleaming shards of light projecting from her hands. Easy to remember. He’d get up and gut her just as soon as his nerves healed. He’d....

“Got her?” the woman asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Deathstrike convulsing in the grip of flaming green serpents that seemed to writhe about in mid-air.

“What there is to get.” Another woman - he couldn’t see her, but he’d remember her voice until he killed her. “Her mind’s a damned lockbox, but I stole the ignition key. She’s out for a while.”

“Someday,” the British girl with the sword of purple energy quipped, “I’ll teach you how to unmix a metaphor. You all right, Mike?”

“Blockbuster,” the big man objected, and Logan tried to snarl through a paralyzed throat. Couldn’t. His mutation was the only thing keeping him conscious in spite of the lack of oxygen, and it hurt like hell.

He was going to kill all of them, slowly. That was a promise.

“Sorry. Orders say we look for the girl and be heroes. Who wants to bet that Dane and Summers have done it for us already?”

“I’ll take some of that action,” the girl who’d shut Deathstrike off like a toy piped up as the three of them moved off, leaving Logan unable even to twitch by way of pursuit. “Five bucks says they found a closet and are busy playing something other than heroes...”

* * *

The bunker under the building, designed for a substantial number of people though it was, felt almost claustrophobic in its present state of crowding. Nearly sixty young mutants had gathered at the Greater Boston Xavier Center for pizza-and-a-movie night which sudden power failure and a sudden explosion had brought to a sudden end and the staff had successfully herded every single one into the shelter. After three militia members and eight volunteers had left to defend their people, sixty-seven staff, volunteers and Center members were left behind concrete-filled steel doors.  

A young Puerto Rican woman led of a team of seven through the crowded passageways, checking for the injured, the panicked, the traumatized. She spoke softly but with authority, gave consolation and jobs to whoever needed them, helped people to their feet, or asked her underlings to carry those who couldn’t walk to the small infirmary. Soon the team had worked its way over to where a redheaded woman, mascara streaked down her face, sat slumped against the wall between two groups of shaken but resilient teenage mutants.

“Are you okay, Miss?” the leader asked. She was very skillfully concealing worry behind a gentle smile. After the redhead didn’t answer, the woman continued. “Is it all right if I touch your arm? I can check you for injuries.”

“I’m fine,” Natalia Alianovna Romanova replied firmly, in a voice that she caused to shake with emotion but which did not suggest shock. “I’m... I’m fine. I just can’t believe this is happening.” The usual nonsense - what else had these people expected, after all? - but it went down well. That was the important thing for the moment. “Is the boy... the one who opened the door, is he all right?”

The disaster worker chuckled. “Stefano’s a bit singed, but he’s a tough kid. Really tough. He’ll be fine.”

“Oh,” Natasha said with a relief she did not feel. “That’s good, then. How long will we have to stay here?” _So much for Wraith’s traps and the Wolverine’s plan to catch them on the run. Hopefully they can get the door open before someone down here asks one question too many...._

She caught a glimpse of the compact, dark-haired woman with the tinted sunglasses tucked into the opposite corner of the room and made herself - with a considerable effort - stop thinking about anything except the state of health of Stefano, whoever he was, and how happy she was to know he was well. MI-6 had insisted that “Sage” was only a minor telepath, that her chief abilities lay elsewhere, but Natalia was unwilling to take any chances. The idea that someone could reach into her head and sift through what they found there, even rewrite it to suit, anywhere you happened to be... if it had been up to her she would have taken the gun concealed against her thigh and shot Sage - Tessa, she was calling herself - through the head and then cleared the room as fast as audacity allowed.

 _Thinking again._ She forced her mind as still as she could make it, studying the fine details of the young black man nearest to her on her right and committing them to memory to banish everything else.

Her efforts were cut short when the loud creak of the vault door lock sounded throughout the bunker for a second time that evening. All heads swiveled towards the sound as one, the tension in the air skyrocketing, and several mutants had gained their feet by the time the foot-thick door swung quietly open.

An armored, unarmed, camouflaged figure strode deliberately through the door, reflected light glinting from the wrists and neck. _Stay calm,_ a stern, female voice said in Natasha’s head. By the collective start all around her it was in everyone else’s, too. _We are the X-Men. We are here to help you. Keep order and follow our instructions to evacuate._

The room started to move, almost as a body, as if that phrase - _we are the X-Men_ \- had been a kind of magic incantation. There was no protest, no confusion, no hesitation. The staff of the Center moved smoothly into action, the youth gawked at the woman in her grey and black armor who seemed to be made out of diamond but moved along quickly, and Natasha slid her hand to rest at her hip and tried to think of nothing at all while she wormed her way through the crowd toward her target.

A glance over her shoulder showed two other armored people standing by the door with the first to direct the flow of evacuees. The man had a strange helmet, the girl hair a brighter red than Natasha’s own. No, it was three others, one of them flickering in and out so fast that she was barely sure she was there.

 _The door is in the opposite direction,_ the same voice whispered to her again. This time, she was sure it was in her mind alone. _And why ever did you bring a gun to pizza night?_

Natasha’s legs stopped of their own accord, her arms coming to rest lightly against her sides, and the violent storm of fury and disgust she expected to burst in her chest and drive the foreign thought away failed to materialize. She felt, in fact, a pleasant lassitude that went extraordinarily strangely with her conviction that something terrible was happening to her.

Her own memories of the mission began replaying in her head faster and faster, and then memories of the Weapon X program from the day she’d been assigned to it, the day her Soviet handler had tried to kill her for the traitor she hadn’t been until that point. Then they stopped. She was still standing, looking at nothing in particular and unable to convince her hands to do so much as twitch when her target walked by.

 _She’s not for Weapon X,_ the voice hissed. _And you are going to help us end it._

 _You will call me whenever there is a new development at Weapon X._ A phone number and a compulsion stronger than granite were seared into Natasha’s mind. _You will choose a place for us to meet, and a time. We will meet, and you will show me everything. And you will never tell, or show, or allow anyone to learn about the calls, our meetings or this compulsion._

She was aware, distantly, of her head bobbing in a nod and of her legs folding under her as she lay down on the floor. Of pale blue eyes burning in the back of her head. Of a cruel, sharp-edged smile she felt without seeing. _And I know you’ve never wondered what it would be like to be obsessed with the work of Valerie Taylor - sexually, I mean - but I think you’ll find it enlightening._

Her eyes closed. Somewhere, someone whimpered - just for a moment, barely audible.

_Good night, Natalia Alianovna._

Sleep closed around her like an ocean without shores.

* * *

The bottom of the west stairwell was full of on-loan Marines, about a dozen big men armed to the teeth and wearing what looked like their unit’s Kevlar budget for the year. They were sitting, leaning, and generally lounging around the best they could, the only two at attention keeping an eye on the door to the basement corridor. Remy wasn’t sure how long it had taken him to get there, but it was clear that the remainder of Weapon X’s backup had been there for some time.

The gathering was noticeably devoid of anyone with claws. Or any other mutants, for that matter.

After the guy sitting highest on the stairs noticed Gambit and brought the rest to attention, LeBeau descended the last flight nervously through a corridor of muscle.

“Boss?” he thumbed his radio on. “Boss, you there?”

There was a low, gurgling growl of a sound which did not so much amount to words as a general fury with the entire universe. It did not, fortunately enough, constitute anything resembling an order.

“Ah.” Remy shifted nervously. “I’m the only one at Point Bravo. About a quarter of the backup is here. I’ll just wait for you to, uh, regroup.” Before the field leader of Weapon X could force any other sounds out of his healing throat, Gambit switched the radio off and stuffed it back into his coat.

“Ok.” He nodded to himself, then to one of the men by the door. “What’s the situation out there?”

“Looks like an evacuation, sir,” one of them replied. Remy swallowed uncomfortably at the honorific. “We have a visual on three hostiles, three others somewhere else. Don’t know where they’re going,” he shrugged. “If your sniper hasn’t seen anyone, must be an exit we don’t know about.”

Gambit sighed. Of course there was a secret exit.

Before he could say anything else, a sound like a wrecking ball smashing through a wall rocked the basement. After the initial surprise, the Marines were tensed for action, ready for orders. A bit of sweat breaking out on his forehead, Remy quietly eased the door open just enough to see what was going on. He was immediately very, very glad that he hadn’t followed the original plan and come bursting into the corridor.

There were two expected hostiles: Cyclops, whose lurid optic blasts field reports indicated could smash a tank like a soda can, and Phoenix, a slim girl in armor with telekinetic abilities none of the intelligence people yet knew the limits of. There was a new one who seemed to be made of diamond under her armor, and he filed her in the back of his head where he kept the stack of information to be used to buy himself out of trouble with Stryker when it inevitably cropped up. They were wearing matching camouflage armor, which probably made them the hostiles the Marines had been talking about, and that meant that the two brightly dressed individuals squaring off with them were a brand new rogue element.

The guy was tall, wearing a sleek space-age hemet with a black visor, built like a mid-grade mafioso thug. Pulsing blue-white ripples of light played around his armored shoulders and hands, searing burn scars into the ground under his feet and the wall beside him, and he looked like he’d probably go off like a high-energy grenade if somebody pushed him. The girl was, if anything, more bizarre - she’d done her armored bodysuit in deep purple with bright green accents, added a dramatic cape to the ensemble, and had finished it off with hair as bright green as the armor trim and a whimsically styled devil mask. He might have thought she was a joke except that she was standing with her hand on the guy’s shoulder, and whatever it was that was burning holes in the wall rippled around her like it was washing off an invisible cloak.

They appeared to be arguing.

Everything turned red as Cyclops let loose, and when he could see again Gambit had to blink to be sure that a huge section of the walls between his corridor and the one the X-Men were fighting in had, in fact, been blasted away.

Light-show-guy didn’t have a scratch on him.

“Don’t get paid nearly enough,” Remy muttered to himself.

The devil-girl had ducked behind her boyfriend and was just as unharmed. She raised her arm, Cyclops lifted into the air as if she held him on invisible strings, and then she slammed him sideways into the wall.

“Dumbass.” Lightshow slammed his fist into Cyclops’s left cheek.

Then he bounced backward into his girlfriend as though someone had hit him in the chest with a giant’s slap, knocking them both sprawling to the floor, and Cyclops got up and shook off the blow in a way that made Gambit wonder just who did the padding in those helmets. “I think my friends can kick your girlfriend up and down this building, hotshot,” he said in a tight, controlled voice. “And if it’s a fistfight you want, we can do that, too. Or you can show some sense, recognize we’ve got this covered, and get out of here before you cause more trouble. Up to you.”

Gambit very carefully closed the door, turning his back to it, and spoke to the Marines in a voice he really hoped sounded calmer than he felt. “So, boys, what say we make our way out of here nice and quiet like?”

The lead sergeant, a big black man who’d kept a stoic expression fixed in place for the last ten minutes or so, shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Whatever you say, man. We ain’t paid enough for this shit, you know what I’m saying?”

Relief washed over Remy as he hiked up the stairs. “Too right, _mon ami._ ”

His radio started buzzing again, and Remy stumbled with an usual degree of clumsiness and smashed it against the doorframe the Marines were preceding him through. He looked up, saw the sergeant looking at him, smiled and shrugged in turn. “Oops.”

“Shit happens,” the sergeant replied philosophically, and they went through the door together


	9. Chapter 9

**Westchester - September 22, 1973**

“You are skilled in many things, Scott,” Kurt remarked in a gently mocking tone from the entrance to the communal showers, “but you really must learn how better to duck.”

His hands braced against the wall and his head firmly positioned under the soothing coldness of the water, Scott resisted the urge to open his eyes and glare at Kurt with the ease of long practice. “I would say something funny,” he muttered under his breath, “if my head would just stop throbbing long enough for me to think of it.”

It had been a short flight back from Boston - shorter by far because of how fast the engines of the custom jet Hank McCoy had designed and Charles Xavier had financed could be pushed - but that hadn’t made the experience of rushing along at twenty thousand feet with an aggravated concussion while Emma prodded him mentally to keep him awake any more pleasant. _When I see that cocky son of a bitch again,_ he promised himself for the twentieth time in an hour, _I am going to kick his ass up and down a New York block._

From the locker room proper, John’s voice called out to throw in his two cents. “The elf’s right, Boss. You dish out better than anyone, but you’re still kinda squishy.”

“Says the kid who can shrug off getting hit with a cement mixer.” Scott gave up on the shower giving him any more relief, shut it off, and grabbed a towel as he started back toward his locker. “Don’t you have to go find Cargill so she can beat you up again?”

Of course he couldn’t see when his glasses were still in his locker, but he was certain that Proudstar was grinning like an idiot like he always did when Joanna was mentioned. “That and fuck like bunnies. She _really_ likes hearing about missions.”

“You, Mister Proudstar, are a hound.” Scott toweled his hair, careful of the bruise at the back of his head and the matching one on his jaw, then finally picked up his glasses and settled them on the bridge of his nose. It was a relief to be able to open his eyes, finally - keeping them closed long enough to shower always gave him a tension-ache behind his temples, and that was going badly with the headache he was already nursing. “What that girl sees in you, I can’t begin to imagine.”

In the middle of pulling on his jeans, the indestructible boy waggled his eyebrows. “Well, she’s usually pretty hot to grab my ass, which looks amazing if I do say so myself, and I’ve caught her staring at my chest, my hands, my biceps...And in the heat of the moment she’s gotten downright poetic about my--”

“No, Scott, I do not understand either,” Kurt interrupted loudly amid buttoning his shirt. “I imagine in a few years she will look back on this as a, what you do say, ‘youthful indiscretion’?”

“Mmm,” Scott agreed, smiling ruefully to himself and suppressing the urge to make a remark about Emma’s responses - which, while not poetic, were certainly flattering. Discretion, better part of valor, all that. He grabbed his shirt instead, pulled it on, and finished belting his own pants before starting for the door. “Try not to break any more school furniture, Romeo.”

“No problem, Scott,” John answered. “Which one is your car again?”

Scott went out without retort, because arguing with a kid that hopped up on testosterone was an exercise in self-punishment. _Emma,_ he thought with a careful sort of loudness, _why is it that young women like over-muscled idiots so much?_

He felt her weariness become tinged with amusement. _I couldn’t tell you. I like my idiots with just the right amount of muscle._

 _Touche,_ he replied, grinning in spite of the ache in his head as he started down the hall past the other locker room toward the elevator that went up to the house. _Speaking of which, you were right about forgetting I was concussed, but can we consider me having to cancel tonight a sufficient encouragement without you reminding me all week?_

 _Hmm. Well, I do hate it when my man loses consciousness and has to be taken to the emergency room. Really kills the mood._ Her smile in his head gleamed with a wicked edge. _Still, I want you to be fully aware of what your carelessness is forcing you to miss._ Then he was seeing out of Emma’s eyes. She was standing in front of the full-length mirror in the women’s locker room. Completely naked. Her soaked hair sent rivulets of water streaming down her throat, breasts, and stomach to disappear in the well-groomed hair between her legs, or continue their path down the fullness of her pale thighs, or drip from her graceful fingers onto the floor.

“Damn,” he said aloud, stopping to rest his head against the door of the elevator for a minute and closing his eyes. _Miss Frost, you are going to be the death of me yet._

Then she was gone from his head with a sudden force that did nothing good for his headache. “What did I say this time?” he muttered under his breath, turning back toward the locker room and then realizing with a fortuitously brief time lag that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do if he went back that way. “‘Excuse me,’” he rehearsed to himself, “‘I just wanted to make sure the woman I’m not actually sure if I’m doing more than sleeping with hasn’t passed out on the floor or something, so do you mind if I come into the women’s locker room where you’re all very, very naked?’ Yeah, _that’s_ gonna work.”

Then Jean - he thought it was Jean, anyway - came storming out of the women’s locker room, hair still wet and blouse half-buttoned, shoved him out of the way with a murderous glare, and then took the elevator upstairs without so much as a word of explanation.

“Um...” Scott opened his mouth, closed it, looked back toward the locker room to find Emma, diamond and wearing only a robe, stalking quickly after the Greys. “What the hell is....”

“Later,” the telepath ground out, not even looking at him in the whole of the seemingly eternal wait for the elevator to return, and then stepped into the car in obvious pursuit before he could collect himself enough to get another word out.

“Right,” Scott said, resting his head against the cool metal of the elevator door again. “Nevermind. I obviously don’t need to know what’s going on. I’ll just stand here, then, and wait for the pain in my head to go away.”

There was a moment of very pleasant silence, but only a moment.

“Scott, man,” John spoke up from behind him, “you gonna use that elevator or what?”

“Mister Proudstar,” Scott said without lifting his head, “just the man I wanted to see. The cars in the garage all need washing and waxing....”

* * *

Standing in front of their open locker, the Greys ran a brush through their hair. _What a night,_ Jean sighed. _A shitty Danger Room session and then surprise enemies in addition to the expected enemies. I think this requires ice cream, sis._

_Hey, at least we got to see Scott threaten to punch somebody in the face, and then throw the guy around. Besides, did you see us peg lime green dye job with him? Eight-ball, corner pocket._

Jean smiled. _Okay, that was cool._ Her eyes drifted across the locker room while replaying the night’s memories. _And everybody got away safely._

Phoenix crooked a mental grin. _Especially the cute black guy with the Grateful Dead shirt. I wish I’d gotten his number.... the fuck?_ She broke off, steering their eyes back the other way and then goggling. _What’s with the pin-up girl?_

 _Weird,_ Jean agreed, watching the other telepath watch herself. _I knew she was vain but I didn’t think it was that bad._

 _Maybe her majesty is trying to make sure she didn’t accidentally bruise something,_ Phoenix suggested dryly.

 _She’s very thorough,_ Jean replied, equally flat. _Maybe we should time her. Alison has that Guinness Book of World Records, right?_

 _I bet we could totally make a bundle if we had a camera and the address for Playboy_ , Phoenix went on, reaching out mentally to give the blonde telepath a tap on the shoulder. _Hey, how much do you want for...._

 _Miss Frost,_ Scott’s mental voice said, underlaid with the sort of imagery that usually drove Jean to covering her face to hide her blushing when it was going through Phoenix’s thoughts, _you are going to be the death of me yet._

The Greys’ mental touch recoiled with an almost painful snap as the revelation hit them in the stomach. A haze of pain blanketed Jean’s mind, and as both hands covered her mouth in shock and her throat closed in anguish, she felt tears stinging her eyes. Then Phoenix was around her, between her and the world like a shield of burning wings, and their breath came raw and sharp through their suddenly open throat.

The blonde turned around, facing the Grey’s with a startled expression, and Phoenix slapped the taller woman hard across the face and stared up at her with eyes that flared incandescent gold and red with the force of her anger. “How fucking dare you,” she hissed out through clenched teeth, her body trembling with contained fury.

Gone from flesh to diamond faster than the Greys had ever seen her, Emma exchanged her look of surprise for a haughty glare. _How dare I do what, exactly? I never saw your name on him, you psychotic bint._

 _You,_ Phoenix bit out with a savage arrogance that was every bit as unyielding as Emma’s towering superiority, _are a self-centered bitch with too much money and no reasonable excuse for brains, and when he gets tired of sticking it in your upper-class ass, he is going to drop you like the useless tramp that you are._ Then she snatched up her jeans, yanked them on, half-buttoned her blouse and grabbed her shoes in her hand before storming out of the locker room without looking back.

Scott was standing between her and the elevator, and she gave him an ugly look and a good hard shove in the chest to show that she wasn’t going to forgive him for this for a long time before stalking into the elevator and jamming her finger on the close button.

 _It’s supposed to be us,_ Jean whispered. _We’ve loved him forever, and waited, and it was supposed to be us, now that we’re old enough. I thought he noticed us more after we got back. I thought--_ she broke off into a silent keening deep in her chest. _Oh, Phoenix, it hurts._

 _Shhh._ The elevator rumbling softly as it rose the short distance to the lowest floor of the mansion, Phoenix leaned against the door and hugged herself tightly to try to transmit a fraction of that comfort to Jean. _He’s just a boy, and you’re beautiful and you’re perfect and if you want him you’re going to have him, sis, I promise you. You’ll have him if I have to tie him up and drag him all the way to our room over my shoulder, I promise I promise I promise._

The door opened, and Phoenix started down the hall toward the foyer and the stairs up to the bedroom, glaring at anyone in sight as if daring them to say one word, even _one word_ about the tears on their cheeks.

She stopped twice on the stairs to wipe their eyes, shoved open the door to their room and started to slam it, and a glittering diamond hand caught it six inches into the motion with a rattling protest of hinges. Phoenix started around, tears still on her cheeks and ready to start shouting again, and Jean couldn’t bear it.

 _No, go away!_ she cried into Emma’s mind, angry that she couldn’t keep her pain from showing. _Please. I just want to be alone with Phoenix._

The diamond woman stood framed in their door, terrycloth robe beginning to slip off one shoulder, still glaring.

 _I’ll be gone in a minute, Jean,_ she said, almost gently, a _fter I make something very clear to Phoenix._

“Go fuck yourself,” Phoenix flared up. “I don’t give a goddamn what you want to make....”

 _You don’t get to be righteously angry,_ her cold voice in their head cut Phoenix off. _You-- or Jean-- are interested in Scott? Sorry, but you should have said something earlier. You don’t get to insult me because you’re upset over a man._

Phoenix took a step toward Emma, as though she might like to slap her again, but didn’t seem to want to risk breaking the bones in her hand just yet. “How the fuck was I supposed to know you were going to steal my sister’s boyfriend, you unbelievable bitch?”

A diamond fingernail nicked the doorframe as Emma threw up her hands. “Funny, he never seemed to realize he was dating you. Perhaps you should have told him.”

Phoenix opened her mouth to shout at her again, closed it, opened it again, finally looked down and then back up at Emma and said in the rather sulky air of someone who can’t find anything better to say, “Your robe is open.”

Without batting an eyelash, Emma slowly closed the robe and tied the belt, and Jean was glad she could feel the other woman’s embarrassment in her mind because the bitch was too good at controlling her expression. It was a welcome distraction from her own chagrin, if only for a moment.

 _That’s what you’ve been trying to tell me the whole time, isn’t it, sis?_ Jean murmured. _Ugh. I hate it that she’s right._

 _I’m just glad she got the robe closed,_ Phoenix mumbled in a slightly dazed inner voice.

 _Me too--wait, you-- oh._ Jean got a good look at the direction of her sister’s thoughts and blushed. _Um. That’s awkward._

 _Yeah. Shit._ Phoenix got their voice box back under control and cleared her throat. “So. Okay. Jean gets upset, I fly off the handle. It’s a thing. But if we’re supposed to be totally cool and adult about this, will you stop being all indestructible and answer a question?”

Crystal melted into annoyingly perfect skin while Emma crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “If it isn’t completely offensive.”

“Are you two exclusive?” Phoenix retorted with a calm and piercing look she personally thought was extremely well-executed and did not in any way give away the extremely inconvenient train of thought banging around in the back of her brain that was starting to get a little jealous of Scott Summers.

The Greys had the satisfaction of seeing complete surprise on Emma’s face twice in one hour. Then she frowned in thought, looking Phoenix up and down. “We haven’t discussed it,” she answered at last. “Are you asking to share?”

“If you’re not exclusive,” Phoenix explained, trying not to think too loudly about the images _that_ conjured up, “then there’s nothing stopping Jean from asking him on a date. Or him from saying yes.”

 _What-- is that-- where the hell do you hear about this kind of stuff, sis?!_ Jean gaped. “Share?” she exclaimed aloud, goggling at the coolness with which her sister and Emma were talking about Scott like he was a good parking spot. “You can’t... I mean it’s not like we could just....”

“Mystique and Mister Xavier seem to manage just fine with Professor Lehnsherr,” Phoenix replied calmly, swiping their voice back. _You are always encouraging me to read more._

Jean buried their face in their hands. “Oh my god. I can’t handle this right now. Goodnight, Miss Frost.” With that, she retreated into the warmth of sleep, lolling on their feet for a moment before Phoenix got proper hold of their body. “Sorry,” she said, once she’d carefully tucked the protective weight of her own mind around the sleeping stillness of Jean’s, “she does that sometimes. Less now.”

Something in Emma’s expression shifted, as if she were re-evaluating the young woman before her. “It’s sweet the way you look out for her,” she said without mockery or even condescension.

“She’s my sister.” Phoenix shifted on her bare feet, a little uncomfortable with the compliment, then threw her shoes on the floor and gave Miss Frost and the whole world an exasperated shrug. “I don’t have any brandy and cigars for a proper smoke-filled room thing, but I’ve got vodka under the bed. I’m gonna have some. You can come in if you want, but you gotta answer my question first.”

The blonde leaned on the doorframe, taking in the room that looked like two half-rooms stuck together. “Seems like compromise beat out consensus,” she remarked, then paused. “I meant what I said. We honestly haven’t talked about it.”

“Summers isn’t big on speaking his mind,” Phoenix said as she dug out the vodka and took a couple of glasses out from the bottom drawer of her dresser, rolling her eyes for emphasis. “And I’m guessing talking didn’t feature big in what you two are mostly doing. But you gotta know at least your opinion on what’s up with the two of you, right?”

She settled down on the edge of the bed, legs dangling off it and glasses on her side-table, then poured vodka into both. That was as good as an invitation, as far as she was concerned.

Closing the door behind her, Emma gracefully lowered herself onto Jean’s vanity chair. She took the vodka in one quick swallow, then held the empty glass in one hand, arm lying elegantly across her knee. “I have several hypotheses,” she said guardedly. “But while I appreciate your candor and current civility, I admit I’m not dying to open up to the woman who threatened to kill me earlier today.”

“You tried to trap Jean in a box away from me and make me think I didn’t exist,” Phoenix noted, grateful for the remembered rush of anger because it made not staring at the long and very bare legs Miss Frost had crossed in a pretense of modesty a little easier. She’d known she was attracted to women, but this was new and really damn distracting. “I’m not sorry I said it, and if you ever try to do that to us again, I really will kill you. But that doesn’t mean we have to play ‘whose is bigger’ all the time, and right now you’ve got something Jean wants. So yeah, I can do civil. Just not all that civilized.”

With a smile and a tilt of her head, Emma held up her glass in a salute. “Violent, intelligent and self-aware. Goodness, Phoenix, I didn’t know you could be charming.”

“It’s one of my gifts,” Phoenix retorted. “I guess I wouldn’t kick you out of bed in the morning, either.”

Her cheeks flushed hot with a sudden blush of embarrassment, and she suddenly became very interested in refilling her glass of vodka. _Oh my god, I just said that. Jean is gonna kill me._

The shift in Emma’s posture was slight, but communicated heightened interest all the same. An almost-suppressed smirk curled those perfect lips. “Oh, Miss Grey? Is there, perhaps, a less sisterly motivation behind your question?”

 _In for a penny...._ Chasing the blush off her cheeks and knocking back her fresh glass of vodka to steady her nerves, Phoenix straightened up and gave Emma her best predatory bar-girl smile. “That depends, Miss Frost, about how you feel about screaming your lungs out all night long.”

The blonde raked her eyes up and down the redhead, then gave her a smouldering gaze. “Your proposal intrigues me, Phoenix.” She stood, the folds of the robe shifting and caressing and suggesting without ever quite revealing. A few swaying steps brought her to the edge of the bed where she stopped, planted between Phoenix’s sprawled legs. Leaning over until her face was inches from the younger woman’s, the neckline of the robe revealing some very enticing shadowy curves, Emma ran soft fingertips over Phoenix’s collarbone, across her shoulder, down her arm, her hand. “I’ll be thinking about it,” she murmured, placing the empty shot glass in the redhead’s hand. Straightening up, she pulled the girl’s head up with two fingers under her chin. “I’m glad we had this talk.”

She had glided her way to the door before Phoenix could make a properly coherent reply, but that was all right. Some things didn’t need words. The redhead reached out with her mind, took hold of the belt and the robe, and gave them both a good yank right about the moment that Emma Frost opened the door.

“Me, too,” she called cheerfully, finding her voice at last. “Come back any time.”

The indignant squawk and the excellent view of Emma’s backside - which was absolutely as good as the front - that accompanied the half-powered mental backhand was absolutely, one-hundred percent worth it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Westchester - September 23, 1973**

After shutting off the alarm, Charles lay in bed for a few minutes, readjusting to wakefulness. He watched weak tendrils of sunlight filtering into the bedroom he shared with Erika and felt the other inhabitants of the mansion beginning to wake, a few minds still jumbled with dreaming. He located Ororo in the gardens. The color of her mind told him that it was a cool day, likely to have fluffy white clouds scuttling across the sky and a few fallen leaves blowing about, perhaps a rain shower here and there. The other teachers were tinged with varying levels of grogginess, and Charles felt sympathy. He suspected that he would never be a morning person.

The door opened discreetly, and he felt the bright warmth of Alice’s mind mingled with the small knot of anxiety in her chest as she peeked in to see if he was following his usual Sunday wake-up call with the sort of spousal re-acquaintance that she wasn’t supposed to interrupt. Her feelings about the idea were complicated and more than a little problematic, but her rush of relief to discover he was not so engaged was at least charmingly simple. She let herself in, carefully closing the door behind her, and circled the bed to kneel down next to him - ready to help him up into a sitting position if he needed it, but patiently allowing him to decide if he wanted to try it himself first. It would probably have been patronizing to actually hear her thoughts about it without the illicit little thrill of hope that it might offer her the chance to touch him.

He smiled at her, nodding his acquiescence, and her hands on his shoulders and back were warm and gentle. Her touch soothed him in its stark contrast to the exhausted, fierce way he and Erika had clung together only a few hours before. It was always like that after she returned from risking her life. It always would be. The only thing that he could do was to pretend he was not as terrified of losing her as he was, and the only thing she could do in return was comfort him with her nearness when she returned.

From sitting, he let Alice help him into the chair, and from there it was only a little distance to the bathroom where they sat in shared silence while she filled the bath for him, undressed him and lifted him into it. There had been awkwardness in that exercise once, but practice and repetition had worn it away, so that now his flash of frustration at being unable to do such a simple task without help was easily buried in the blushing excitement she felt at seeing him undressed - even for something as mundane as this, it was an emotion she could not suppress. It had been this way even before they had become more than a man and his assistant, but she had tried harder to keep it out of her eyes and off her face then. Now, when they were alone, she no longer even tried.

He didn’t mind at all.

“Charles,” Erika called softly from the bedroom, “I’m going down to breakfast. Alice, is he well this morning?”

Alice blushed, composed herself, then spoke in a pleasantly professional voice that had nothing at all to do with the jumble of shame, jealous embarrassment and possessive pride tangled up in her thoughts. “Perfectly well, Mrs. Xavier. I’ll have him down to breakfast before you know it.”

“I’ve no doubt you will. Good morning, then.” Erika’s voice was equally pleasant, though Charles could taste her silent laughter as she finished dressing herself and imagined the furtive expressions on their faces. It was not a very accurate image, but it amused her, so he resisted the urge to correct her. “Until breakfast, husband.”

After the bath, Alice helped him dress. The expression of longing on her face and her lingering touches along his bare skin made him chuckle.

“Goodness, Alice,” he teased gently, grateful for the small joy of it, “you seem to enjoy getting me into my trousers almost as much as getting me out of them.”

Her cheeks flushed, but she grinned and whispered back to him with a fresh flood of relief at the opportunity to speak her mind. “If you weren’t so very attractive in both cases, sir, I might be able to restrain my hands from wandering. As it is, I’m helpless to resist, and you will have to let me know if I need to make up for any inconvenience my indiscretions may cause you.”

One hand wandering into her hair, Charles leaned up as she bent closer. “Oh, yes,” he murmured, enjoying they way her green eyes darkened, “very inconvenient. Serious compensation in order.” Their kiss was sensuous, all the more heady for Charles as he drank in her mouth and thoughts alike, and she eased him down into his chair so she could take his weight off her shoulders before kneeling down in front of it and giving him a decidedly wicked little grin.

“Early breakfast?” she inquired playfully. “We’ll have to be quick. Someone might notice you’re late.”

His breath already quickening, Charles laid his hands over hers, thumbs stroking the delicate skin of her wrists. “Don’t worry, love,” he said, voice low, “we’ll just say I had trouble getting out of bed, if need be. It’s often true.”

She reached up and touched his face lightly, smiling in sympathetic agreement, and then set about the kind of taking care of him which was decidedly not listed in her job description with eager dedication.

They were, in fact, quick.

By the time they made it down to breakfast, Erika was already engrossed in a discussion about pending assignments with Miss Frost, Mister Ramsey and Mister Richter while the four of them ate, and the Greys were contemplating the sideboard indecisively while Roberto and the Beaubier twins worked around them. Alice rolled him to his own place at the end of the table across from Erika - they’d never really agreed or tried to agree which end was the head and which the foot - and gave Ororo a brisk nod of greeting while Alice poured him coffee and then went to fetch him a newspaper and fill his plate.

He would read half a dozen of the local dailies in his office after breakfast, but the first newspaper Charles read was always the Times. Before he began, he pulled out the comics and the sports sections to pass among the students, smiling at their enthusiasm. He knew that once Scott made it to the table, he would snatch the baseball scores from whichever student happened to have it at the time.

“Mister Xavier?” Ororo caught his attention as he was re-folding the paper. “Another election in Argentina?”

Charles flipped to the front page. “Yes,” he answered, frowning slightly. “Apparently they’re expecting Peron to win again. Nobody thinks anyone else can keep order.”

Ororo sighed. “I see.” Charles nodded. There was really nothing else to say.

Resuming his reading, Charles paid only minimal attention to his food. He took in the updates about the sadly typical unrest in various regions of the world, the legislative situation in D.C., a new scientific discovery. It was only near the end of the regional news that he found what he’d been expecting.

It was bylined T. J. Walker, photo credits to S. Reyes, though the image had been shrunk down so small that the telepath could barely make out the burned-out doorway of the Boston Xavier Center or the room behind it full of smashed furniture and dark stains. The article itself was brief, but gave Charles the impression that it had been cut down from a longer piece. It conveyed only the most basic facts of the event and ended without any comment. He suspected the editor had removed that, too.

Worried, his eyes flicked to Erika, but her bland mask was firmly in place. He sent her an image of the article couched in his wordless, questioning concern.

 _We had a lively outing,_ she replied mentally, carefully channeling it back to him in the quiet and private way that they had learned to do over the years when they didn’t want the Greys to overhear without having to put forth an effort. _Our old friends from Washington, which we had half-expected, but something else as well. Mutants operating independently, as a group._ She flashed a sequence of composite mental images to him, each one diamond-sharp and crystalline in the way that only a telepath could have assembled and compressed. _Their field commander and Scott did not exactly get off to a promising start._

 _Indeed._ A sip of English Breakfast helped conceal Charles’ dismay. _Mister Stryker is employing mutants now?_

 _That was the impression of the..._ Erika paused to greet Phoenix softly as the girl - firmly in charge of the body now, from the way she strutted to the table - settled herself on the chair across from Miss Frost and began eating voraciously. _That was what the Center’s defenders thought. The information Emma extracted from the infiltrator that Stryker’s people - they call themselves Weapon X, apparently - slipped into the Center ahead of time would seem to confirm it. Five of them for field use, including the metal-boned monstrosity we encountered previously at Springton. Apparently she survived, and he’s made another in the bargain._

 _Dear God._ A deep breath failed to calm Charles’ nerves entirely, but he was at least able to firmly push unhelpful - and unsettling - speculation aside for the moment. He changed the subject. _Any idea what the new group’s motivations are?_

_None at all, other than they seemed very intent on leaving with the same quarry Stryker sent his thugs after. What Miss Sage has to offer that interests them both so much, beyond a modest talent as a telepath, remains to be seen. She’s resting comfortably in one of our safehouses in the city at the moment, but so far is not as helpful as we might like. Either she doesn’t know what she knows, or she doesn’t want to tell us._

The door opened, admitting Scott to the room, and he smiled a little ruefully at the looks some of the students at the table gave the livid bruise on his right cheek. “Always check the jack twice before you crawl under the car,” he told them firmly as he loaded a plate with eggs, toast and bacon before sitting down near the other instructors. “That way, you stay pretty. Speaking of the cars, any of you seen John? He was supposed to polish them up for me.”

Alison Blaire covered her mouth and snorted. “He’s getting _something_ polished, for sure.”

Erika took the opportunity - in the interests of the girl’s moral education, of course - to chide Alison at length for the indecency. Scott just set his jaw, shook his head and sighed.

 _How are you feeling this morning?_ Charles asked him silently. _Head injuries can be serious._

 _So people tell me._ Scott smiled crookedly down at his plate, then lifted his head to look at Charles and shrugged his shoulders. “What can you do? I guess I’ll just have to be fine with it.”

 _And tell someone if it gets worse,_ Charles insisted, trying not to let too much worry leak through the connection.

 _Yes, Dad,_ Scott told him, a hint of warmth leaking into the word. It had taken them until after Scott had left for college to really be comfortable with that idea and all it implied, but few of the things Charles had worked for in his life had been quite as worthwhile.

He had only a moment to enjoy his adopted son’s filial warmth. Several places down the table, Miss Frost inhaled sharply and started to cough around her toast, a few crumbs escaping despite her best efforts. The daggers she glared at Phoenix confirmed that her choking had not been a spontaneous event.

Charles sighed.

 _Girls,_ he said to the Greys. _Allow me to remind you of your time scheduled downstairs._

 _We remember,_ Jean replied. She was withdrawn, even for a period when her sister was in control of the body. Charles found it curious but respected her distance. _Phoenix?_

 _I remember, sir,_ Phoenix said with a certain laughter that was not quite what he had expected in her voice. _We didn’t say anything she wouldn’t like, sir._

Which, mysteriously enough, seemed to be the truth as best she knew it. He decided that he most definitely did not want to know.

 _That does not change what happened in the Danger Room yesterday,_ he continued with some defensive stuffiness. Some days he wondered which of his many sins he was being punished for.

 _No, of course not._ Phoenix sighed with a certain air of resignation. _Even if we did apologize._

Charles blinked, took a bite of egg, swallowed. The frequency of Phoenix’s apologies was something akin to that of certain astronomical phenomena. Before he could decide whether or not to ask the other relevant party, Miss Frost inserted herself into his thoughts.

 _I thought you should know that Phoenix and I have come to an understanding._ All sorts of things he never wanted to learn squirmed under the surface of the last word. _Our peace is a bit strange, but no less real for it. Do with that what you will._ Then she left him in silence to finish her meal.

A few seconds later, Phoenix twitched as though touched with something electric, then stabbed her bacon a few times before Miss Frost very discreetly coughed on her orange. Scott looked up at that one, giving Frost a look that said he had no idea why she was having trouble with her food. She said something about fighting off a respiratory virus.

Now Erika was hiding a smile behind her cup of tea that suggested she wasn’t convinced in the least that Emma Frost was suffering from anything of the kind. Charles decided to move on to things he could make sense of.

 _What do you propose we should do about this Weapon X?_ he asked his wife. The rescue missions have gone well, but they haven’t addressed the root of the problem.

 _Anything I might like to do about them is going to have to be placed on hold until we can learn something more useful about the new players on the scene._ Erika stirred a fresh cup of tea together from the pot, contemplating it as though it might tell her something, her fingertips tapping lightly against the saucer in thought. _The ideal response, of course, is to find the spine of their operation and crush it thoroughly. I believe Miss Frost maybe pursuing a useful way to do so. But until we know what our eccentric cousins intend, it would be dangerous to risk being caught off balance._

 _True,_ he agreed, unhappy. _I’ll look for them with Cerebro this week. Perhaps Weapon X, as well. Aside from the public appearances, the Foundation can do without me._

 _Thank you, my love. I know that you don’t care to use it without necessity._ It was becoming an old argument now, but one they were already accustomed to handling with delicacy. _I will see that when we do find them, our children are ready to handle them safely._

His heart ached to think of the terrible things the children might face. Might do. With hardened shields he kept his sorrow from his wife, as nothing could be done to assuage it without bringing new, worse grief. That was the trouble with the work they’d begun together - as much as he tried to forget it when he went about preaching tolerance and building new Centers, they had made an unlimited commitment to protecting their own people, and that commitment exercised compulsions that did not care how much blood or pain or risk might be piled up under their feet.

There were days, Charles admitted to himself as he took another bracing sip of his tea, that he was not entirely certain whether he had co-opted Erika’s vision of the future or she had co-opted his.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: Bigotry, religious and otherwise. Biblical quotation. General military-industrial villainy.
> 
> William Stryker is a fairly unpleasant person to be inside the head of. We - obviously - don't endorse his views, but the story needed to include them.

**Washington D.C. - September 23, 1973**

As much as he sometimes hated the way his work knew no boundaries of time, Stryker was actually glad that the previous night’s mission-- _fiasco_ \--fell on a Saturday. The beauty and solid grandeur of the National Presbyterian Church rarely failed to calm the Colonel’s frayed nerves and center his faith in his God and his work. The sober stillness of the service, the reverence of the music, the bright morning light spilling through the windows to fall on the congregation - it was a reminder of everything he had been given the responsibility of protecting, and why that protection was ultimately worthwhile.

He stopped at the doorway to shake the pastor’s hand and thank him for the fine sermon, then went out down the front steps with the day’s scripture still ringing in his head.  

> Do you not know?
> 
>    Have you not heard?
> 
> Has it not been told you from the beginning?
> 
>    Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
> 
> He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
> 
>    and its people are like grasshoppers.
> 
> He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
> 
>    and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
> 
> He brings princes to naught
> 
>    and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
> 
> No sooner are they planted,
> 
>    no sooner are they sown,
> 
>    no sooner do they take root in the ground,
> 
> than he blows on them and they wither,
> 
>    and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
> 
> “To whom will you compare me?
> 
>    Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One (Isaiah 40:21-25).
> 
>  

William Stryker was a man of science, and not overly inclined to compare the genetic aberrations which had arisen in his native land’s population with the demons and false gods of old, but the parallel did not escape him. He could not believe that God had intended any man to be empowered to level cities or bend minds by his own power, any more than that it had ever been God’s will to set a man on a throne by birth alone to define the lives of all beneath him. Every man was alike in the eyes of God - a sinner in need of repentance and guidance - and to set one’s self above that was an act of defiance no less than Lucifer’s.

Perhaps it was simpler even than that. Stryker took the Declaration of Indepence very seriously: all _men_ were created equal, and since these mutants were decidedly not equal, it must follow that they were not men. A problem of nature to be solved, no more and no less.

He finished pulling on his gloves against the fall chill, and saw Natasha waiting by the car, her expression as pleasantly unreadable as ever. Some things, at least, could be depended on. To a point.

“Agent Romanoff.”

“Sir.” She opened the door for him, glancing over his shoulder. He had more than once invited her to join him, but she was as adamant on the topic as her position allowed. Natalia Alianovna Romanova had been born and trained in a system that dismissed God as an illusion and religion as a drug for the masses, and she was not yet inclined to change her views. Pity. Still, he would continue trying, and until she was ready there was no point in compulsion.

He seated himself in the back of the car, waited for her to circle around and enter from the other side, and then signalled the driver with a rap of his knuckles against the window.

Once on the road, Romanoff wordlessly handed a file to her superior. Stryker took it with equal silence, deliberately not showing his satisfaction by her efficiency in preparing the report. It wasn’t exactly the Russian’s fault that her cover identity had been compromised--it was clear to him now that even when telepathic influence wasn’t an expected threat, going in unshielded against it was unacceptably dangerous--but his disappointment, frustration and anger about the previous night’s failure were still too bitter in his mouth to allow for praise.

The Colonel finished the report quickly. It was unrealistic to assume that the other operatives had completed their own reports, but Romanova would make notes of their verbal debriefing and compile a complete recounting of the mission, another file that would probably be on his desk by the time he walked into his office tomorrow morning. Perhaps by then he would be able to thank her.

“LeBeau seems quite certain that the new mutants he observed were not associated with the X-Men or the local militia,” she murmured over the rumble of the engine, as if seeking to fill the silence or chase away some of his displeasure. “The same may be true of the group which disabled Deathstrike and Logan.”

As Stryker sat silent, he observed the nation’s capitol slide by the tinted windows outside. At last he spoke, voice low and steady. “What’s your opinion, Agent?” He grimaced. “How many mutant paramilitary groups will we have to contend with?”

“At least two. Maybe more.” The tight anger in her voice was a match for his own, however carefully he suppressed it. “The possibility is proved. Many may act on it.”

A hand pulling at his clean-shaven chin, Stryker frowned. “Yes. We’re going to need more than just one or two ops teams in the field, eventually. Probably much more.” He sighed. “But one thing at a time. How many groups do you think were present last night?”

“I would say two. The ‘X-men,’ which we know, are one. The pair LeBeau observed and those that attacked Logan appeared to be coordinating, which suggest they are of the same group. Further, there is the evidence in their mutual fondness for ... evocative masks.”

The Colonel flipped the file back to the drawings his police sketch artist had made, pictures created from the descriptions of the Weapon X operatives and the Marines who had witnessed the new threat. Despite the situation, Stryker smiled in grim amusement. “That’s certainly one way to describe these circus costumes.”

“They seemed to want to make an impression,” she agreed, her eyes drifting from the page to stare out the window. “We can’t make an effective estimate of their capabilities, but if they worried Magneto’s people, then they must be dangerous.”

“That and however many of our casualties were their doing,” he growled, snapping the file shut again. He’d known it was going to be bloody work when he signed on, but he didn’t have to like it.

Any further speculation was postponed as the car pulled into the darkness of the Weapon X facility’s underground parking garage. The elevator ride and short walk to the conference room was punctuated only by the greetings from the various subordinates they passed on their way up.

When they arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule, it came as a surprise to no one that only North had arrived. Agent Zero was sitting with his feet up on the solid table, a coffee straw in his hand but no cup in sight.

“Agent North,” Stryker greeted curtly. His eyes scanned the room, landing on the small pile of push pins--no, push pin heads--a few inches from the sniper’s shoes. He lifted an eyebrow and tapped his hand ever so lightly upon the table.

He was a nondescript man, beyond the fact that his grandparents had emigrated from the Empire of Japan, and he could have vanished on any city street on the west coast or in Asia without the least bit of effort. He was also, according to his file, perfectly capable of putting a 9mm pistol round through a one-centimeter target at a hundred and fifty yards while in an uncontrolled fall and then picking himself up from the ground after that fall without a hint of a bruise. North took the time to lift the straw to his lips and blow through it, and a small scrap of paper and the point of a pin attached to it buried themselves in the wall just beside the door. “Colonel,” he said, voice devoid of any particular emotion except perhaps the faintest hint of amusement.

Clenching his jaw, Stryker refused to look at the sniper’s target, if there had been a target at all beyond the bland paint of the conference room. “This isn’t the shooting range, Agent,” the Colonel bit out. “And you are not a high school student.”

North discarded the straw onto the table and took his feet down, though there was no hint of regret or discomfort in the small smile on his face. “Just passing the time, sir.”

Before Stryker could reply to that, footsteps were suddenly coming down the hallway. That they hadn’t been there a second before informed him that Agent Wraith had arrived.

The man himself entered the conference room with a quick scan, assuring himself of the contents of the room. “Colonel, sir,” he greeted Stryker, then sat.

It was one minute before the scheduled time.

Natalia moved to take her own seat at the left of the head of the table, glancing at Wraith with a certain narrow displeasure in her eyes, and he shrugged and spread his hands as if to ask what he was supposed to have done. The answer, of course, was more, but since neither he nor the Widow had been able to define what that more ought to have been, Stryker was prepared to let it pass for now.

The door opened, then closed, and his most successful modification project to date moved to take her designated seat beside North without particular expression. None of his diagnostics had indicated any lingering damage from the telepathic attack which had disabled her, but he would have to obtain the services of a telepath himself to be sure, and there was the almost contradictory difficulty of finding one both reliable and powerful enough for the task. Until then, he would have to trust that his conditioning had been comprehensive.

“Does Stepford have to be here for these things?” Wraith gave the woman codenamed Deathstrike an uncomfortable look. “She ain’t gonna say nothing, and she creeps me out.”

“What is this ‘Stepford’?” Natalia inquired with a narrowed glance.

“It’s a novel. You know, a book? You do read books in Russia, right?” Wraith was, apparently, not in the mood to take her displeasure with good humor.

Stryker took a moment to rest his face in his hands, massaging the temples. “You don’t decide meeting rosters, Agent Wraith, I do.” The Colonel’s voice carried great tension and hinted at his weariness, the sound of a man nearing the end of his rope. “Your feelings are irrelevant and I don’t want to hear any more about this. Am I clear?”

The teleporter adopted a sour look. “Sir, yes, sir,” he replied, the barest hint of sarcasm giving him some expression without giving Stryker anything to officially complain about.

It was three minutes past the scheduled time. The Colonel glared at his watch and wished he was a little less disciplined. A Scotch before the debriefing would have made his ‘team’ easier to deal with.

The door banged open loudly enough that it made Natalia’s head snap around and Wraith jump in his chair, and Logan entered with LeBeau practically at his heels. They brought the atmosphere in with them from the hallway, and it was choked with a hostility that was only a little short of violence. Logan shoved his chair next to Stryker’s back, scraping it on the floor, and thumped into it with a growl in the base of his throat that was only vaguely human.

Gambit went to his seat with a pained grimace, presumably from the noise, directing it and his squinty glare at the other latecomer. He leaned on one elbow, gloved hand shading his eyes from the fluorescent light above, and took a deep breath.  “Sorry ‘bout the time, sir.”

Stryker exhaled through his nose. “Your condition appears to be punishment enough, LeBeau, so you get off with a warning. Don’t let it happen again,” he ordered flatly.

Gambit nodded shortly, earning himself another wince. The Wolverine smirked at him from across the table, probably taking a smug satisfaction in the fact that whatever he’d been drinking the night before was long since purged from his system without noticeable after-effect.

Stryker couldn’t deny that the Wolverine, useful though he may be, was an asshole.

Natalia closed the door.

“Reports?” the Colonel asked the table. Deathstrike slid two manila folders across the table to him, one she’d written herself and one by the team in charge of her care, feeding, and conditioning. He stacked them neatly with Romanoff’s file.

There was a noticeable lack of any other written material in the room. Stryker sighed. He hadn’t really expected the others to do their homework, but it was still irritating.

“The rest of you,” he ordered, fixing each in turn with a stern glare, “will have your reports on my desk by three this afternoon. There are typists available if you require one.”

“Now,” he continued, “there are several things I want to clear up. First, the new enemy group. Who are they? What can they do? What is their agenda? Logan, you first.”

Logan shrugged, though his lips pulled back over his teeth. “Fuck if I know anything except that they got themselves a couple of sneaky telepaths I’m gonna gut when I get the chance, and a big bruiser I wanna see take a .50 in the skull and see how he likes it.”

In her quick, unreadable shorthand, Natalia started taking notes.

He took them through all of it, point by merciless point, trying to winnow out any hint of additional fact that might be useful, and half an hour later he was none the wiser for it. Whoever the new players were, they had taken his people off the board so quickly and efficiently that he could not even get a proper picture of how.

It was not a reassuring thought. Neither was the distinctly unhelpful explanation Remy LeBeau made for his decision to evacuate the premises.

“So you just left?” Natalia’s acid disbelief spared Stryker from having to lift his face from his hand and ask the question himself.

Remy shrugged, still trying to keep the light out of his eyes. “It looked like all I was gonna do was get some big holes punched in my handsome yet mortal self. And for what? The plan was shot to hell. There was no chance I coulda gotten the girl. She was already gone, no?”  

Natasha’s eyes narrowed further, but she said nothing - only took down whatever she was thinking in another of her notes, the pen scraping audibly on the page.

Stryker resisted, with effort, any urge to demonstrate his displeasure. “I find it curious,” he said finally, “that your radio was damaged at such an inconvenient moment.”

“Shit happens,” Remy replied without batting an eyelash. Stryker had to admire his nerve, even if it increased the chances the boy was lying to him.

Well, there were ways of dealing with that, too.

“Reports by three o’clock,” he told them, folding his hands on the table. “You are all dismissed.”

The silent relief running through the room lessened the collective, teeth-clenching alertness dramatically. Amid the team getting to their feet, the Colonel met eyes with Logan, the barest shake of his head indicating that the field leader of Weapon X should stay behind.

Romanoff noticed, of course, but was well-trained enough not to question it.

After the door closed behind the last of them, Stryker took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Sometimes it was the little things that helped him stay sane.

“I find it very convenient that the X-Men arrived on the scene not ten minutes after we did. Don’t you, Logan?”

“Like hell,” the Wolverine growled, but there was a cunning light in his eyes as he sat back in his chair. “Somebody had to tip ‘em off. No other way they coulda known. Not somebody outside, either - no matter how fast that fancy jet David got himself a look at is, they had to have known the moment the bomb on the door went off.”

“Or before,” Stryker nodded. “After the target arrived, she’d have told the Center director that she was being pursued, and then Ms. Leevald could have called in her tip.” He folded his hands together, staring into space, and then focused again on his operative. “We have reason to believe, Agent, that the Xaviers are more than just...activists,” he said, lips twisting around the word. “Intelligence indicates that they likely have a strong connection to the X-Men--funding, safehouses, information, maybe all three.”

“Figures. Bet those Centers are great little recruiting stations.” Logan’s lips twisted cynically. “Rich hippies who think they’re gonna make the world a better place. Probably thought Castro was a great guy up until that whole missile thing. You want to do something about it?”

“It seemed imprudent, given their prominence. But if we do have two enemies now, it might be best to take the one we know most about off the board....” Stryker tapped his fingers on the table, considering, then nodded. “I want to know what they know. Arrange it.”

“Who can I get?”

“Anyone or anything you need,” Stryker replied, “except Natasha. They may know her by sight now.”

“Gimme a week. Maybe two. It’s gonna need the right cover.” Logan took a cigar out of his jacket, stopped in the act of lighting it, then clamped it - unlit - between his teeth. “You gonna get us a telepath, or we do it the old fashioned way?”

Stryker shook his head. “A lot of things would be much easier if we had one. Just keep the collateral damage to a minimum. I don’t want to bury more bodies than strictly necessary.”

“Old fashioned is fine with me.” Logan smirked around his cigar. “Man’s got to be willing to get his hands dirty.”

A tingle of distaste ran down the Colonel’s spine. Stryker’s total commitment to fighting the mutant threat might give the Wolverine’s bloodthirst some satisfaction, but they were not the same.

Still, even animals had their uses.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: Canon-typical violence, bigotry, street harassment, explicitly implied sexuality.

**Manhattan -** **September 29th, 1973**

The Saturday evening sunlight was spilling down the long avenues of New York in golden streamers as the sun settled down into the Hudson, the cramped streets crowded with people of every class and background, the magic of evening obscuring the grime and shabbiness of the streets and letting the life of the little shops and neighborhood bars shine through. It was Scott’s favorite time of the day - the moment when the city felt the most like it had when he was in college and roaming around on the subway all day, going everywhere from the Battery to Central Park to Harlem and Brooklyn. There were plenty of people these days ready to declare that New York was a dying place, full of immigrants and mutants and urban degenerates, abandoned by respectable white residents who’d had the good sense to relocate to the suburbs.

As far as Scott Summers was concerned, anyone who was enough of an idiot to stop loving New York deserved their self-imposed exile.

“...and you aren’t even listening, are you, Scott.” Emma’s rant about the social politics of _Enter the Dragon_ wasn’t an over-reaction - using misogyny and racism for laughs and dramatic tension were certainly upsetting - but Scott was enjoying the city and the company too much to share her outrage.

“Not really.” Scott turned and crooked a grin at Emma. “Still planning to send Warner Brothers a letter of protest about what happened to Tania and Mister Williams?”

With narrowed eyes and pursed lips, Emma tossed her hair over her shoulder. Scott couldn’t help enjoying that, too. “Yes. I can hire some Smith students to gather signatures backing it up, too. If that fails, I’m considering starting my own movie studio.”

Scott swallowed a laugh. He wasn’t surprised when Kurt, expression completely innocent of amusement at Emma’s expense, turned to her with curiosity. “What sort of films would you make, Miss Frost?”

She glared into the distance with a fierce light in her eyes, an empress planning her conquests. “Movies where the women and black people don’t die just to give the hero something to emote about. Movies with women and black people who _are_ the heroes.”

“Or mutants?” Phoenix, who’d insisted on wearing a black leather jacket with a matching short skirt and pair of boots in spite of the fact that everyone else was dressing nicely for the evening, nudged past Emma and put her arm through Kurt’s. “You’d totally kick Bruce Lee’s ass, Flynn.”

Kurt drew his broad-brimmed hat a little lower over his face and shrugged a little deeper into his oversized coat, but his teeth still flashed sharp white when he smiled. “I am not sure I would be as photogenic, _meine Tiger._ ”

“Much better looking,” Phoenix retorted, dropping her voice to a playfully husky whisper. “And all the girls would wonder what you can do with your tail.”

He didn’t have to be looking at her directly to know that Emma rolled her eyes.

“She’s not wrong,” Scott said judiciously, grinning. “Are you blushing, Kurt?”

“ _N...nein._ ” Kurt cleared his throat and affected an air of injured dignity. “Never.”

“Bullshit. I could make a priest blush,” Phoenix put in airly as they turned down 110th, tracing the north edge of the Park, heading east toward Lennox. Her eyes wandered down the line of the street, and some of the laughter went out of her voice. “Nice new apartment building up there. We’re, what, a block west and a block south of the Center? Think they’d let Kurt and I get a place together?”

Scott shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and tried to make his voice causal. “You’re both a little young to be getting a place of your own, aren’t you? Besides, I didn’t realize you two were serious.”

“Madly in love. Don’t change the subject,” Phoenix murmured, a hint of anger uncoiling into her voice.

“Much as I hate to agree with Phoenix,” Emma added cooly as she eyed the building in question, “she has a point. Mutant ghettoes aren’t exactly a secret, and they are a problem.”

Scott sighed. Apparently the evening was destined for demoralizing conversation. “If you start a picket line, I’ll join,” he shrugged, “but it’s a nice night and I was hoping to have dinner instead of intimidate local property owners into doing the right thing.”

“Just dinner?” Phoenix sniped.

“Why yes, Scott,” Kurt cut in loudly. “I too would like to have dinner. Did you have a particular cuisine in mind?”

“There’s a nice Italian place that’s been here forever in another block, or we can go up a couple of blocks if we’re looking for Puerto Rican.” Scott kept his hands in his pockets, his voice casual, and his mental shields up firmly. He really didn’t want to be thinking about the possibilities for post-dinner entertainment, especially not in the company of the two particular telepaths he was out with at the moment.

 _Deep breaths,_ Emma’s voice resonated with his shield without breaching it. _You’re not as inscrutable as you’d like, right now._ She flashed him a half-smile. _Think pure thoughts._

“Oh! Fried bananas. I love fried bananas.” It might have looked like Phoenix talking, but it was definitely Jean’s inflection. Scott suddenly became very, very interested in the number of windows in the buildings up the street. Math had always been useful for suppressing those kinds of thoughts.

“ _Tostones_ or _maduros_?” Emma inquired innocently.

“Either way.” Phoenix had the voice back now, and put an extra note of relish in her tone as she put the boot in. “As long as they’re big ones.”

Scott groaned as quietly as he could. It was going to be a very, very long night. Probably not in the way his imagination was loudly hoping for.

“The seafood sounds interesting,” Kurt said cheerfully, his intentional obliviousness reaching heroic levels. “Is it true that you can cook fish with only lemon juice?”

“If I let her, sis is going to give you an hour long lecture on the effects of acid on proteins,” Phoenix sighed, giving Kurt a long-suffering look. “You don’t know how much pain I’m saving you.”

Kurt laughed, which loosened Scott’s chest up enough to let him join in, and then the whole bunch of them were chortling like idiots while Phoenix was grinning at them and Jean kept trying to interject psychically in a way that would probably have been more dignified if they couldn’t all feel the rueful tenor of her indignation.

“Aren’t you a little far uptown for an East Side girl?” The big guy with an East European accent and a leather jacket who thought he was funny got a drunken laugh from his buddies as they spilled out of the half-lit park and onto the sidewalk behind Emma, and Scott pushed the rush of protective anger down with the dry thought that at least their hecklers were a good cross-section of the area. White, black, Puerto Rican - five men who’d decided to reach past racial politics to find common ground at the bottom of a glass. Ororo’d be proud before she kicked them in the balls.

Without even sparing the men a glance, Emma kept walking. “How popular is this restaurant, Scott? Will we have to wait for a table?”

Before Scott could answer, the drunk called out again, this time from only a couple of arm’s-lengths away. “Hey, I’m talking to you, bunny. Are you a stuck-up bitch or are you just holdin’ out for us to pull out our wallets?”

Scott’s jaw clenched a little, but he put his hand on Emma’s waist and kept his voice mild. “Not too popular. Outside seating. We should be fine, and if there’s a wait, we can walk around the block.”

“She thinks her high class boyfriend is going to get pissed if she talks to real men.” One of the drunk’s friends - Upper Harlem, from his accent - decided to get in on the act. They were following them down the street, which was good and bad - good, because it was a stupid thing to do if they were actually muggers, and bad because it meant they were stubborn as well as drunk. “I could take him for a walk, let you guys talk with Playboy and her friend.”

“Playboy? Seriously?” Phoenix muttered under her breath. “Maybe on page 17.”

“Phoenix...” Scott murmured warningly, keeping his steps measured. Fear would just encourage them. “Don’t start something we don’t want to have to finish.”

 _But I want to,_ Phoenix said darkly into his head.

They looked like they might escape an incident until one of the drunks grabbed Emma’s elbow. He was curled on the ground, hands clutched to his groin, before Scott had finished turning around.

“I am most definitely a stuck-up bitch,” Emma informed the men. “Now get lost before I decide I want to put all of you in your place.”

“I would believe her, _meine Freunde,_ ” Kurt advised. “She is not to be trifled with.”

Scott’s hand clenched at his side. _That was a mistake,_ he wanted to tell Kurt, but maybe if he just didn’t draw attention to it....

The big guy who’d spoke first looked up from crouching over his friend, rage on his face, but whatever he’d been about to say vanished in the sudden rush of fear and revulsion that Scott didn’t need to be empathic to feel.

“Jesus, what is that?” He yelled, trying to pull the downed man to his feet. “It’s one of those mutant freaks!”

Next to him, Scott felt Kurt switch into combat mode, emotionless and poised to act. “I am sorry, Cyclops,” he murmured. “A tactical error.”

“It was a nice night,” Scott murmured back just as quietly, then stepped forward to shield Kurt with his body while he offered the man a false, reassuring smile. “You’ve had too much to drink, friend,” he told the panicked drunk mildly. “You’re seeing things. Let me get you a cab.”

“The hell he is,” another of the men shouted back. “Beer goggles make ugly bitches pretty, not blue.”

One of the things he really disliked about drunks, Scott realized, was how loud they were. People on the street had stopped to watch the confrontation, and the closer ones looked were staring at Kurt now, or whispering frantically to their companions, or backing away slowly.

And then there were the eight men walking forward with purpose, faces twisted into hateful sneers and their hands in their pockets in a way that said _weapons._ He’d known the local Watch was having trouble with a few street gangs in the area whose idea of a fun Saturday night was running a mutant through the alleys like it was a foxhunt, but he hadn’t actually seen them before. The drunks were suddenly the least of their problems.

He threw his mind open and felt Emma react, the silent telepathic network already becoming reflex even after the short time she’d been with the field team, and made himself relax. _Kurt,_ he thought carefully, clearly, keeping his emotions out of the projection, _it’s your call for the next forty seconds, until those toughs get here. Beatdown or fast talk? I’ll back your play._

Eyes flicking over the crowd, the drunks, the gang, Kurt shook his head minutely. _Too many bystanders, too many attackers. A fight would go badly. And I do not think they will listen to any kind of talk,_ he reasoned in that eerily calm tone he had at times like this. _I will remove myself from the situation. No target, no attack._

Scott’s gut said that was probably wishful thinking, but if he didn’t let Kurt do what he wanted to do, whatever happened would sit on Kurt’s shoulders for the next few months. Not to mention, the coldly practical voice in the back of his mind suggested, that it would be much easier to deal with the police if they didn’t have to explain Kurt to the arresting officers. He hated thinking like that. It didn’t make it less true.

 _Go,_ he told Kurt silently.

The younger man ducked away from them into the park, moving fast, and a large chunk of the crowd - Scott resolutely refused to classify them as a mob - went charging after him like hounds smelling blood. Kurt was well out of sight in the shadows of the trees when Scott caught the familiar _bampf_ of displaced air and the faint scent of sulfur on the wind. If Kurt was smart - and he was - he’d have timed it to be out of sight. His pursuers could spend hours combing the park looking for him and never find a thing.

 _Smart._ The word stuck in Scott’s head like a piece of broken glass.

After the runners - _hunters_ \- had left, the drunks were thankfully gone, and most of the bystanders had gone back to their business. But half the gang still stood between Scott, Emma, Phoenix and the park, arms crossed over their chests.

“You’re a fuckin’ disgrace,” one of them spat. “Betraying the whole human race by letting that monster near you. Near your women.”

Scott held down a fresh surge of rage and shrugged his shoulders, making his voice as flat and measured as he could. “I tried to get her interested in a nice black boy,” he said, as if he was discussing the weather, “but blue’s apparently the new fashion this year.”

“He’s more of a man than any of _you_ are, that’s for sure.” Phoenix’s voice was cruel and mocking. “What he’s got between his legs would make you all weep with envy.”

The gang bristled, expressions ranging from enraged to disgusted. Another man, tall and broad with a big gut, stepped forward. “You his breeding bitch, little slut? Maybe we should give you a good gut-punch, nip any hellspawn in the bud.”

Scott was never sure, afterward, what exactly it was in those words that set him off. Maybe it was the idea of someone calling Kurt ‘hellspawn.’ Maybe it was someone - anyone - talking to Jean or Phoenix that way. Maybe he’d just had about enough bigoted shit for one night. What he was sure of, afterward, was that it had been a decision. A choice. He knew that because he took the time to smile and polish his glass - eyes firmly closed - before he did anything.

“That ‘monster’ is my little brother,” said a voice that sounded like his, if you’d dipped it in ice and sharpened the edges first, “and I don’t like the way you’re talking to my girl, either.”

Then he opened his eyes.

* * *

When he opened up to her, Scott’s mind was raging with barely-suppressed fury, more than she’d yet felt from him. His leash on his anger was stronger than most - men carrying a fraction of his rage tended to erupt into violence - but she didn’t know his breaking point. They could be seconds from it or perfectly safe.

It put her on edge to the point where she had to concentrate to avoid turning to diamond. That was probably what kept her from stopping the second thug from stepping forward.

Then he did, and talked about killing unborn mutants, and Scott’s mind pushed her out with the pressure of his anger. White-hot and overwhelming, she was surprised that he could still string words together.

She saw him go for his glasses, tensed, realized he was cleaning them and relaxed a little. But then the whole world turned red.

It was only a fraction of a second. It was over before she could register the light and the cacophony of gigantic scraping and crushing and terrified screaming.

Half a yard from Scott’s feet, a fan of scraped-off concrete and asphalt widened from a ragged six inches out to two bus-lengths on the park side of the avenue. At the edges of the destruction, cars sat with their paint scraped and doors dented as though they’d been grazed by another car pulling out. Closer, the cars had been flipped end for end like tinker toys or crumpled around trees. The people in the street were limp - and the gang of thugs, lying in the park, showed obvious signs of broken bones - but their minds were the rattled stillness of unconsciousness and mild concussions instead of the absent silence of the dead.

Scott adjusted his glasses, looking up and down the suddenly empty street, and then spoke in an impossibly quiet voice for the man who’d just done so much damage without moving a muscle. “I think we probably ought to think about leaving before the police arrive,” was all he said.

With a disbelieving snort, Emma hooked her arms through his and Phoenix’s and propelled them towards the nearest alleyway.

“Scott,” Phoenix said once they were safely out of sight,  more than a little breathless, “tell me you have thirty dollars in your wallet.”

Scott’s expression of wry disbelief was the sort of thing Emma wished she could frame and hang on her wall. “I think damages are going to cost a little more than that, Phoenix.”

“Not for damages,” the redhead clarified in a voice low with desire. “For a room. Right now.”

There was barely a second between Phoenix’s declaration of lust and Emma’s outraged hiss. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Of course,” Phoenix husked, giving Emma an almost incredulous look. “Aren’t you?”

 _Not everyone makes decisions with their privates,_ Jean spoke up to the group. _This is a terrible idea and you know it. We should get back home._

“The Professor and Mister Xavier are going to be pretty pissed if we don’t get back tonight after that little street display.” Scott was clearly trying for an authoritative declaration, but it got lost somewhere around the way Phoenix was looking at him and came out more lazily speculative.

Emma opened her mouth again, intending to protest, but what came out instead was “They’re going to be furious either way, aren’t they?”

Apparently, Phoenix wasn’t the only one whose higher brain functions were impaired by the sight of Scott Summers unleashing wanton destruction on a group of men who, in pretty much anyone’s opinion, deserved it. Her blood was singing with adrenaline - clearly, all of theirs was - and she was having no luck in getting the idea of a hotel room for three out of her head. Or other places.

“Probably. Yeah.” Scott turned and looked at her, and the way his eyes moved up and down her body - even if she couldn’t see them, she could _feel_ them - was like rough nails on her skin. “The police....”

“Are going to be expecting people to try to get out of town or hole up at the Center,” Phoenix murmured. “Not get a hotel room for the night.”

 _I am horrified that this plan is starting to make sense_ , Jean added dryly. A chagrined smile appeared on Scott’s face, and Emma couldn’t help her answering smirk.

She flicked an evaluating gaze at Phoenix. _Jean?_ she asked privately. _We could just sleep._ It was probably a lie, but it a well-intentioned lie and they both knew it. It was also a chance for Jean to put her foot down and say absolutely not, if that was what she needed.

 _This isn’t how I want Scott,_ the gentler Grey answered Emma, half hurt and half amused. _I’ll go to sleep, you three have your fun, and I’ll have a nice, gentle, romantic night with him sometime later. Alone._

Phoenix flushed, a little embarrassed but not actually apologetic, looking her age for once. It was disturbingly attractive. “I’m good with that,” she murmured roughly, eyes on Emma’s. _If you are._

Her steady gaze was more inviting than challenging, and Emma realized that Phoenix’s flirtations and dirty mental images were more than just a fun way to piss her off. She found herself nodding and let her arm slide around Phoenix’s waist. “No arguments left,” she murmured, leaning in and biting the redhead’s lip.

Scott made a sound in his chest that wasn’t - quite - shocked. “Right, then,” he breathed low enough that it was more the thought Emma heard than the words. “I don’t know what kind of women they have where those assholes were from, but the idea that I ‘let’ any of you do anything is so fucking stupid I don’t even have the language for it.”

“Less language,” Emma purred, turning back to him after leaving Phoenix panting. “More fucking.”

“Hotel room,” Scott suggested in a tone of voice that hovered somewhere between reasonable and pleading. “Less chance of having to fight off the police if we go there first.”

“That could be fun,” Phoenix breathed in a voice that was gratifyingly pleasure-drunk.

“Not if I leave you hanging to fight them off,” Emma retorted, smirking. “Now be a sensible libertine and join us in temporary privacy.”

“Whatever you say, Miss Frost,” Phoenix purred, and then did something with her mind and Emma’s own panties that was not at all fair or sensible. If she hadn’t been so busy enjoying the visceral rush of authoritative heat from hearing the girl say her name quite like that, she’d have complained. Really, she would have.

They made their way to the nearest vermin-free hotel, Emma enjoying the way Scott was losing his battle to keep his mental acuity and uncomfortably aware that her own was doing only slightly better. She was going to make the girl pay for that later, she promised herself.

The thought was deeply pleasant. It nearly made up for her momentary burst of incoherence in asking for the key to the room.

“I’d say I’m sorry about the Tiffany’s Barbie thing,” Phoenix hissed into her mouth on their way up in the elevator, having insinuated herself between Emma and Scott in a fashion that pretty much defined public indecency, “except that I’m not. The page 17 thing was B.S., though. You’re definitely centerfold material.”

“Stop talking,” Emma breathed into that pretty little mouth. “You’re ever so much more pleasant when you don’t talk.”

 _Whatever you say, Miss Frost,_ Phoenix hummed into her thoughts.

She was _definitely_ going to make the girl pay for any number of things. In spite of herself, Emma was smiling at the thought.

The morning, she decided, could just take care of itself.

* * *

Scott startled awake, hard, and did the first thing he did every morning when he woke up - the thing that had taken years of training and conditioning to make certain of. He did not, natural human reflex or otherwise, open his eyes.

 _Shall I tell you,_ Charles’ Xavier’s voice boomed in his mind at a volume Scott had no doubt was carefully calculated to cause pain but no harm, _about how worried Kurt and Erika have been all night? Or how we’ve had to work very hard to keep the children from hearing the news so they don’t panic and try to run? Or how many mutants in the city have been forced into hiding or into police custody thanks to you? The Center is on lockdown, Scott. Every mutant-sympathetic lawyer in town is working to keep our people out of custody or out of group cells with the worst sorts of people. Not to mention the midtown hospital whose emergency room is full of new broken bones and concussions._

It was going to be one of those conversations. Scott suppressed a mental sigh, and buried the fact that Emma had been absolutely right about the fact that Charles would have been almost as pissed last night if they’d....

Emma. It took a decade of mental block training not to spill the rush of sensory and visual memory that caught up with him from the night before all over Mister Xavier, and he was _not thinking_ very hard about where he was precisely and what the warm weights against him were by the time he remembered to take a breath.

 _I have absolutely no excuse, sir,_ he told the man who was not quite his father, silently pulling in another centering breath and trying not to notice that the room smelled very distinctly of people and things he was not thinking about. _I made an angry, personal decision. I’m not sure I could have reversed the escalation of things by making a better one, but there was a moment before it happened when I stopped trying._

There was a cold silence, and then the voice was back, still angry but a little less the voice of Old Testament Yahweh. _I assume from the continued existence of Midtown that Miss Frost and the Greys are safe._ Which was completely unnecessary for Charles to ask except to encourage Scott to twist on his guilt. To be fair, if he hadn’t been so busy with all the things he wasn’t thinking about right now, it would probably have been working pretty well.

 _Yes,_ Scott thought, carefully suppressing any impulse to reach out and reverify that fact with his hands. Not thinking about how good their quiet, sleeping breathing felt against his skin. _They’re asleep. After last night, we were all pretty keyed up and exhausted._

He did not, did not, did _not_ think about exactly how exhausted, or how they’d gotten that way.

 _I imagine,_ was the terse, dry reply. Ah, yes. The famous Westchester charm.

Scott tried not to smile. It really wasn’t appropriate at the moment. _We should have called, or mindsent, or something. We honestly didn’t think of it, which was a whole separate level of stupid, but we weren’t trying to duck this. Lying low seemed like a good idea, and once we calmed down, we were out like a light._

 _Scott,_ Charles clipped out into his head, _are you hiding something from me?_

 _Yes._ Scott let out all of his breath, and kept his mind as blank as he could while he formed the next thought. _I was out with Emma and the Greys last night, sir. There are a lot of things I’m hiding from you._

The pause was longer, this time. Scott wondered, not for the first time, how many errant thoughts of his Charles wished he hadn’t heard.

_None pertaining to the safety of our people, I assume._

_None,_ Scott agreed. _Not that you had to ask, but you had to ask._

 _Quite_. Another pause, and now Charles’ voice was nearly calm. _We’ll send a car for you. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the building. Ororo should be there around six._

Scott resisted the urge to quip something about missing breakfast. He was presently counting his blessings that he wasn’t going to go about quoting Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star for the rest of the week. _We’ll, ah, be here,_ he agreed.

 _Quite. Until then._ And there was the distinctive silence of being, at least temporarily, alone in his own head.

“That could have gone better,” he whispered to himself, shifting fractionally to try to find his glasses and then giving up when he discovered that his arms were both more or less pinned under warm, soft weight, “but I’m not sure how.”

 _If I don’t get to my glasses,_ he reasoned silently, _I’m likely to blink eventually, which would be a Bad Thing. If I try, I’m likely to wake one or both ... all three?... of them, which could also be bad. Or good._

_I am in so much trouble._

He felt Emma shift position, and then felt his glasses deposited on his chest and warm lips on his throat. _Yes. We all are._ She was using her field voice, cold and hard enough to deal with the world, her touch the only way he could tell that he wasn’t part of what needed dealing with. Even if she hadn’t let him know that, he wouldn’t have begrudged her her mental combat stance. He had, after all, gotten her into this. Whatever this was.

He slipped his glasses on, opened his eyes and smiled at her faintly as he took in the state of her hair and the lingering bruises and scratches on her skin from the night before. “You look gorgeous,” he told her quietly. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

 _Ngh,_ a second voice said inside his head as the slender, redheaded girl on the other side of him stirred with the shift of his body. _Why the fuck are we up at this hour of the morning? What’s wrong with you people?_

Something Scott hadn’t realized was tense in his chest relaxed. He actually hadn’t had any idea which of the Greys were likely to wake up next to him in the morning, or how that even worked, and the possibility of it being Jean had seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. At least Phoenix had agreed to what had gone on last night with ... enthusiasm.

And now he was back to not thinking about things again.

“I liked that position,” Phoenix murmured against the back of his shoulder. “It was fun. We should do it again.”

A snort from Emma might have been laughter or might have been dismissal. _Next time, we’re using straps. Telekinetic bondage is NOT light._

 _Awww, I’m sorry, Miss Frost,_ Phoenix simpered. _I’ll be more gentle next time._

Emma’s eyes narrowed, and then Phoenix tightened her nails into Scott’s shoulder and whimpered as though she’d been slapped (which was not a sound he’d ever expected to be able to identify without other cues). Then she made an apologetic, breathy sound in her throat, and started squirming across Scott’s hips under the blankets.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said. Phoenix’s laughter hummed through his head. _Can’t talk now,_ she said, imitating Emma’s posh accent for the moment, _mouth’s about to be busy. Happy to improve your morning, but first come, first serve._

“I’m going to hide you for that pun,” Emma said out loud, then gasped. “Really. Later.”

 _Promise?_ Phoenix thought loudly.

The generic alarm clock on the nightstand - which he vaguely remembered getting knocked over - reminded him that they had a couple of hours before they had to be ready to leave. It probably wasn’t in the spirit of penance to spend the morning doing what he was thinking about doing, but to hell with it.

The sentiment was shared, if Emma and Phoenix’s simultaneous groan was anything to go by. There were probably disadvantages to sleeping with telepaths he hadn’t discovered yet, but the instant feedback on ideas before you carried them out was definitely a plus.

 _Stop dawdling and get a damned condom!_ Emma hissed into his head.

Grinning in spite of himself, Scott did as he was instructed. It was, really, the only sensible thing for a man to do at a moment like this.

They were only a few minutes late getting down the stairs to Ororo, which was a minor miracle, especially since their efforts to take a shower had been singularly counterproductive if the objective had been to restore some civilization. Scott smoothed his jacket as best he could, stole a sidelong glance at Phoenix’s rumpled skirt and Emma’s unfortunate white dress (white, apparently, showed wrinkles rather strongly), and buried a sigh. They hadn’t been able to find Emma’s hat, his tie or Phoenix’s underthings, and he honestly wasn’t sure which of them was worse off in the respectability department on that score.

The eyebrow Ororo raised punctuated her sigh and subtle frown. “I see.”

“Don’t ask,” he advised her quietly. “They’re likely to tell you.”

“Or show you,” Phoenix piped up with indecent, wicked cheer as she slid herself into the back of the car.

“I did not think you wished to be flown home, Phoenix,” Ororo murmured in reply. “Of course, I am happy to accommodate.”

“Cute,” Phoenix grumbled, then bounced a little on the seat and threw a wicked look back at Scott and Emma. “Leather seats. Could be fun.”

“No,” Scott sighed, but he couldn’t help smiling. “Not right now. Emma, make her behave.”

Miss Frost sniffed. “Clearly, I am the only adult in this relationship.”

He couldn’t tell what Phoenix thought or did in response to that, but whatever it was, it almost made Emma fall over as she climbed into the car.

“I did not think you wished to fly, either,” Ororo added, another well-deployed eyebrow conveying her seriousness. His adoptive sister was scary sometimes.

“I’ll go quietly,” Scott preempted.

“Traitor,” Phoenix mumbled, already nuzzled up against Emma’s side.

“I think I am beginning to hate you both,” Emma breathed, not entirely convincingly.

Scott buried a grin and threw Ororo a wry half-smile as he started to climb into the back himself, “I’d offer to drive,” he said, “but I don’t think I’d be able to keep my mind on the road.”

He didn’t think he was imagining it when the interior of the car suddenly cooled at least ten degrees.

“Drive already,” Phoenix husked, her face buried somewhere in the fall of Emma’s hair.

It was impressive, Scott had to admit, how Ororo could localize wind to such a small space, especially considering how long she managed to do it.


	13. Part Three - The Shape of Things to Come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those who've been waiting on us the last two weeks, thank you for your patience. Life issues and editing logistics have been getting the better of us. That said, it's going to be a straight shot through Part 3 from here on out. Buckle up and be ready, because things are going to get a little crazy. 
> 
> Chapter warnings: Kidnapping, brief mind control, implanted suggestions (nonconsensual), marital arguments, ongoing deception of a romantic partner.

**New York -  7:45 pm - November 3, 1973**

“Boss,” Susana Reyes said through her teeth, “if you ever stick me with having to wear a dress to anything ever again, I will take all your booze and cigs away and lock you in a hotel room for a week. _Comprende?_ ”

Stubbing out the butt of a Marlboro in a fancy crystal ashtray, Tom J. Walker grimaced. “C’mon, Sue. You keep saying that like I wanted to be here. Blue-blood fundraiser for admittedly noble but boring-as-hell help for the kiddies?” He tapped out a fresh cigarette, cupped his hands around lighting it, and took the first drag. “Fuck no. Not to mention this monkey suit,” he grumbled, gesturing at the coat and tails that alternately pinched and sagged off him as if they returned his animosity.

“You were the one who said it would be a brilliant idea to try to ambush the French Prime Minister in D.C. on ‘the mutant question,’ remember? ‘It’ll be be fine,’ you said. ‘Snap a few pictures. What’s the worst that could happen?’ you said.”

Tom snorted and grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. “Riiiiiight, like you weren’t chomping at the bit to get a good shot of Messmer.”  The bright notes of citrus and flowers in the drink, much praised by the old money around the journalists, slid straight down Tom’s gullet. He put the empty glass on the table next to the others. The wait staff were supposed to be taking them away, but after he’d literally growled at the first one, they’d left the right inside the ballroom door alone. “Besides, not my fault they were so touchy.”

Reyes quirked a smile and snapped a couple of quick shots of the glitterati, keeping her back more or less to the wall. Given that she’d gotten a good quarter of her photography experience in war zones and the toughest sorts of urban environments, most people would have figured it for reflex. Tom, who’d spent more time with her than anyone she hadn’t slept with and most of the people who had, knew it was because she was worried about falling out of her heels. “I’m wearing a dress, Tom. A _dress_. This is a Xavier Foundation party - in a tux, I might actually have been able to score.”

Jotting down some half-hearted notes on attendees, Tom grinned. “What, can’t two skirts have a good time together? I thought we were in the time of abandoned gender roles.”

“Fuck that. You have an idea how hard it is to get a girl to realize you want up her skirt if you’re wearing one? New York girls are so fucking square.”

Eyes suddenly focusing across the room, Tom sat up. “Hey, it’s one of the Frosts. Didn’t think they’d ever acknowledge Xavier again after he married the mutant science Jew.”

Susana snorted. “That’s Emma. The black sheep. You don’t read the tabloids, _cabron_?”

“Since when do you?” Tom asked, head following the blonde’s trajectory. Her white ballgown did everything to play up her curves and grace of movement. Also the legs. Damn.

“When a piece of ass like that is on the cover,” Susana explained, which was damned hard to argue with.

“And what an ass,” Tom agreed. “You think she’s just here to snub Mommy and Daddy, or does she have some other thing with the Xaviers?”

Reyes shifted a few steps, tracking the blonde with her eyes, then clicked her tongue. “See the woman she keeps circling back to? Near the middle of the pack of middle-aged industrialists over by the band. We know her. Gave us our little pep talk in San Francisco, remember? I’d know that body anywhere.”

Shifting in his chair so he didn’t have to crane his neck, Tom looked at the tall, dark-skinned woman who was somewhere in her twenties but nevertheless had a long fall of pure white hair. “Right, I remember now. Mostly. They have good acid is San Fran.” He caught Susana’s eye and nodded towards the women. “Might as well try to catch them now, before the main event. Schmooze time.”

“ _Si, jefe._ At least you’re more or less sober.” She checked her camera, adjusted her focus, then started picking her way across the room. “Try not to get us thrown out. Not everyone feels the way I do about your way with people.”

Chuckling, he waved cheerily to a waitress. Her eyes narrowed. Several of her co-workers swooped in to clear the table of their glasses and cigarette butts.

One of the silver linings of upper-class parties was that attention-seeking was looked down upon. It meant that the people who wanted to be in the _Times_ had to be subtle about getting Tom’s attention, and so it was a breeze to ignore every last one of them as he followed Sue across the room towards the white-haired woman.

The cigarette wound up on someone else’s crystal ashtray.

“Evening,” he smiled, hand extended and body language warm and comfortable instead of the slouchy standoffishness of a few seconds before. “Tom Walker, _Times_. We’ve met before, Ms. Munroe.”

Politely excusing herself from the businessman she was talking to, she turned to Tom and returned the smile. “Mr. Walker. It’s good to see you again. I’ve enjoyed your latest pieces on both racial and species-based segregation.” Her hand was slender and soft in his, but he could feel strength there, too. She nodded to Susana. “Ms. Reyes. Equally a pleasure.”

“That’s a fact,” Susana muttered under her breath while she took a snap of Ororo looking elegant and composed.

“Somehow, I imagined you’d be taller.” The short, sweet-faced woman with mild blue eyes standing next to Ororo extended her hand to Tom as well. “Sylvia Talbot. I remember your article on the first Pride march three years ago. I’m delighted to meet you. Please, if you wouldn’t mind sparing my picture from the paper....”

“Not at all,” he answered, and to his relief Sue pointed the camera elsewhere while he slid a small, beat-up black notebook from his coat pocket. “Could you console us with a quote?”

“‘The Xavier Foundation is unquestionably the national leader in advancing the well-being of children, both medical and educational, regardless of the color of their skin or the circumstances of their birth. No American of conscience should count themselves an opponent of such a cause.’ Will that do, Mr. Walker?” She had a singularly charming smile. He had it on good authority (okay, Sue had it on good authority) that Talbot’s charitable contributions to Columbia University might have as much to do with a certain leggy professor of political theory as more abstract philanthropic concerns. What was it with him and his affinity for lesbians? “If you can be discreet about it, I can also tell you that the Foundation is going to be involved - financially involved - with a new civil rights organization whose founding will be announced just a few weeks from now. In fact, that’s what Miss Munroe and I were just discussing. Perhaps we could arrange an exclusive for the _Times_.”

This time, his grin was both brilliant and genuine. “Ms. Talbot, you just said my favorite word. We’d love an exclusive.”

“And _you_ must be the famous Miss Reyes,” Sylvia practically purred, slipping her arm through Tom’s but reserving her eyes for Susana. “Do you know, a friend of mine cut every single one of your pictures from Vietnam out of the magazines and sent them to me one by one?”

“Was she pretty, and can I get her number?” Susana teased, grinning and trying not to trip on her heels as she turned to follow them with her camera still ready at hand.

Ororo smiled to herself as she watched them go. Human or mutant, seeing misfits find community in each other was always heartwarming, even if Walker did smell like the worst sort of bar. His work was unusually fair-minded, though, and the new National Gay Rights Task Force Sylvia had been lobbying funds for all over town could use the respectful attention in print.

She circulated a little longer, charming where charm was needed and conferring quietly with the practiced team of activists working the room - socialites, academics, mutants with the right knack for being presentable - and the occasional nervous school official trying to make a good impression. Ororo herself, while outwardly serene, was strategizing and re-strategizing with fierce attention to detail. In another few years, she expected to be able to navigate the social currents as well as she could the jetstream, and with as little thought. After all, she had begun her work as heir to the Xavier Foundation directorship a terrified college graduate. Three years of galas, protests, board meetings, lobbying, legislative sessions, governors’ and mayors’ offices, and thousands of phone calls and letters had done a lot to build her abilities and accumulate successes.

It had been a struggle. Not just developing her skills - that would have been hard enough. She lived at the edges of someone else’s world. Not the same as it had been twenty-five years ago, but it was still a white man’s world. Still a human world. Ororo was very aware that if she hadn’t been charming, well-educated, attractive, and backed by one of the richest white, presumed-to-be-human men on the eastern seaboard, she wouldn’t hold the position she did now. What - mostly - kept her from resenting it every day of her life was the thought that the next person like her who needed to make a serious impression on the New York philanthropic scene would be pushing on a door already wedged open. She occasionally imagined that bright, fiercely committed young person - variously female, black, mutant or all three - being told they had the potential to be the ‘next Ororo Munroe,’ and the idea was distinctly satisfying.

“Not, I think, Miss Cargill,” Emma Frost mused in a low murmur as the white-clad instructor (and chaperone for the night) glided up beside her with the grace of a lifelong survivor of these sorts of events. “Swapping amusing nicknames for guests with Miss Moonstar and Miss Blaire and keeping her hands off Proudstar seems to be the best we can expect from her tonight.”

Ororo’s lips curled up at one corner. “Considering what she could do - and has done in the past - I think she’s coming along quite nicely.” _I apologize. I hadn’t thought I was projecting._

Emma sipped her champagne. _Your mental voice is clearer than others. Probably because you speak less._ She sighed. _And now Allison is contemplating light-based pranks._ “Excuse me. The Xaviers wanted to speak with you before the speech, which is why I came over in the first place.” _Telepathic summons are frustratingly indiscreet for how discreet they are._ Then she was off to ward off some doubtless amusing anecdote that would not have helped the tone of the event.

Smiling more broadly now, Ororo gracefully waved off the next person wanting her time, and glided to one of the many smaller rooms opening off the ballroom. This one had the clearest pathway to the stage and podium (including a ramp brought in specially for Charles) and access to a private restroom.

Ororo knocked before letting herself in.

“Ah, Ororo, good,” Charles greeted her, a set of typed notecards in one hand. “How’s the audience? Ready to fund the greater good?”

Alice stood from where she’d been adjusting his tie, nodded to Ororo, and picked up her ever-present leather-backed notepad.

Ororo gave a quick sketch of the mood of the room, adding a few details like Walker and Reyes, and mostly did a good impression of someone delivering important information. Charles kept up his end of the act, looking perfectly interested in what she had to say. It was entirely theater, since he could have pulled all the information out of her head or simply checked the thoughts and feelings of the entire room himself with a trivial effort, but it was also part of their ritual for handling events like this. At first, she’d suspected it was (and certainly valued it as) a breather for her to regroup and regain her confidence after working a room full of strangers, but she was long past needing that. Beyond the security concern of keeping Charles’s gifts secret, she had eventually realized that her mentor was preparing himself for the task of talking to a room full of people about a matter of great importance without resorting to anything more sophisticated than simple human language as his tools. As much as he was her respite from the crowd, she was his warm-up.

“Is Irving still nervously checking the crowd?” Erika Xavier, sitting at a small table off to the side with a book still open in her hand, spoke up without lifting her eyes from the page. She normally restricted herself to light socializing at Foundation events, but the Chancellor of the New York public school system was a personal friend of hers - an acquaintance that dated back to the process of having the Xavier School properly accredited - and the blistering dissatisfaction she’d expressed with (soon to be former) Mayor Lindsay’s handling of the United Federation of Teachers' strike in 1968 was one of the few times anyone could remember her forcefully expressing any political view. The public and private schools of New York were an acknowledged passion of hers, and so it was not strictly out of character for ‘Professor’ Xavier to be more involved in managing this particular party.

That didn’t mean Ororo had to enjoy it.

“Chancellor Anker is here,” she said stiffly. “He was speaking with Mr. Buffet last I saw. They share an interest in rummy.”

“Perhaps I can convince them to bring a few friends to a game. Some sort of charitable event,” Erika murmured, affecting a distantly thoughtful expression. “Do you think that would be a good idea, Charles?”

If she’d been in the ballroom, Ororo would have reacted by looking very interested in Charles’ response. As they were in semi-private and Alice knew at least some of the various tensions between the members of the Xavier household, Ms. Munroe pursed her lips, turned on her heel, and walked out.

“Well,” Erika sighed, a small smile on her face. “I suppose there’s still some of the girl who decided to redecorate my laboratory with leaves in there after all.”

“That was quite the fight,” he chuckled. _How long did it take for the weather to settle back to normal? A few months?_

“Does she have a bad temper under all that composure?” Alice wondered.

“Ororo is a very sweet-tempered young lady, right up until the moment that she decides to hold a grudge. Then she finds ways of ensuring that you know she is unhappy with you and that you suffer for it,” Erika said, and there was a well of fondness in her emotions that would have surprised and discomforted Ororo. “The two of us, in particular, have always been difficult.”

Which was another way of saying that Charles’s best student - who was an even more devout non-violent activist than he claimed to be and an extremely independent-minded and principled woman besides - did not much approve of either Erika’s ‘sensible caution’ about how mutants ought to be taught and trained or her second career as a vigilante protector of the mutant community.

 _You always had a gift for understatement, my dear,_ Charles’ affectionate laughter bubbling through Erika’s mind.

Alice looked at her watch. “The program begins in five minutes, Mister Xavier. Do you need anything?”

Charles tapped the stack of cards together and handed it to Erika. He was fairly good at memorizing speeches, but if he stumbled all he had to do was read the script through his wife’s eyes. “Just a glass of water, please. Thank you, Alice.”

Nodding, his assistant disappeared into the ballroom for a moment. Charles took Erika’s hand in his own, kissed it, and reached up to brush his fingers across her face. _How does the mask fit today, love? Not too badly?_

It was another of his many long-lived worries. Both of them were excellent at hiding in plain sight,  but even so, performing in semi-private had begun as a hardship. Sometimes it still was, though for the most part it had worn down into merely cumbersome over the years. Sometimes - the worst times - it didn’t weigh on them at all.

 _Uncomfortably well. I suspect that’s why I felt the need to needle poor Ororo. Still, it’s better than fantasizing about wrapping spoons around the necks of our guests._ She wrapped her other hand around his, kissing his knuckles gently in turn, and allowed herself a privately sharp smile. _Do you need me to find some business out in the crowd to do so that Alice can ensure you’re properly relaxed for your speech?_

Huffing a laugh, he shook his head. _Now, darling, you know I’m not so old that a couple of minutes will suffice._

 _You were singing a very different tune in Carnegie Hall a few months ago._ At that particular moment, it did not matter a whit that both of them were past forty and respected leaders in their particular spheres - Erika’s wicked little smile was the one a woman saves for the man she knows to the last quirk and foible, and Charles practically blushed like a schoolboy.

_I seem to remember being teased relentlessly for nearly an hour by a certain magnetokinetic. The few minutes backstage were hardly the entire performance. What was it? Oh, yes, you were thinking about unconventional applications for the unusual effects of electrical current at low intensities._

“Oh. Yes, that’s right. I was considering something of that nature, wasn’t I?” Her stained emerald eyes glittered softly with carefully controlled laughter. _I suppose I can hardly blame Alice for lacking the scientific knack._

Charles was laughing in earnest when Alice returned, trailed by two waiters. He made a silent note to himself to employ the catering agency for this event again - not only employing Asian and black men on their staff but putting them in the same room with the guests of honor was a good mark of their politics.

He only had half a moment of misgiving at not being able to hear their minds before the otherwise non-descript Asian covered Alice’s mouth with one hand in a grip that ensured he could probably snap her neck before she pulled loose and trained a pistol on Erika. The bearded black gentleman reached into his cart and produced a cowboy hat and a shotgun, neither of which went with his conservative formal clothes, and covered Charles and Alice while he herded Erika over to join them.

Alice’s mind radiated indignant terror. The men were smothered static, barely audible over the general mental noise of the hall. Erika’s emotions were the ones that hammered in Charles’s chest, though, smothering his own with their weight - the cold, searing acid of her rage and the icy calculation of her thoughts as she simulated fear.

Even if he didn’t call out actively with his mind for help, Emma would already feel the sudden surge of emotion. They were thirty seconds, a minute at most, from someone rushing in to help. The important thing was to ensure that when that happened, the man with a grip on Alice would not be able to hurt her before he was stopped. He and Erika had agreed on that in the first fractional moment of adrenaline-spiked anger, while she was evaluating the amount of metal each man was carrying (limited, beyond their firearms) and planning how to disarm them with as little risk to her cover as possible.

Then the world turned itself horribly inside out around them, and they were decidedly not in the small waiting room behind the ballroom. Charles struggled with his own nausea, with the sudden disorientation pouring off Alice and Erika, and was perversely grateful in that moment for the chair which did not require steady knees to keep him upright.

The man holding Alice lowered his pistol, pulled a heavy black curve of plastic out of a box that was already open, and wrapped it around the back of Alice’s head. It hooked over her ears and strapped across her forehead, clearly intended to be hard to dislodge, but what suddenly cut through the fog of dizzy sickness cluttering up Charles’s thoughts was the way Alice abruptly vanished from his mental map of the room. One second she was there, and the next she wasn’t.

A rough hand dragged his head back, something sharp against his throat as a warning against struggling, and then hard plastic was against the back of his head and he didn’t have to pretend to be afraid because the world went silent. It took almost all of his willpower to hold himself back from battering at the walls of his mental prison, and only then because he knew that he couldn’t help Alice or Erika if he was curled in a ball screaming.

“If you hurt my husband, there are a great many people who will devote their lives to seeing you spend the rest of your lives in the most unpleasant prisons imaginable.” The pieces of the device that pressed against his ears smothered and distorted Erika’s words as though they were coming through a radio afflicted with static, but he recognized the cool hardness of her under the outward display of outrage. She was still here, still alive, still speaking.

“Shut the hell up.” A man’s growl in the lowest guttural bass Charles had ever heard, the sort of voice that would have drawn stares on the street. “Secured. Get your ass together, John.”

“With all due respect, boss, yanking people through space ain’t as easy as it looks.” The man with the shotgun had gone about as bloodlessly pale as his complexion allowed. “And you know your metal shit fucks with me, so don’t even think I’m gonna carry you to the second rendezvous.”

“I’ll drive.” The growl picked up an irritated note. “Stop squirmin’, girl, or I’ll start cuttin’ pieces off somebody. Yeah, that’s better. And lose the shotgun, Wraith. Trigger ain’t that big a thing to move.”

“Great.” The teleporter, his color much improved, straightened up and tossed his shotgun. Someone caught it. “You gonna tell Zero to give up his gun next?”

“Trust him to keep a grip on it. Get.”

“The things I put up with for this outfit,” the man named Wraith muttered under his breath, and then the world twisted itself into a knot and untwisted again. Through the fresh wave of feeling as though his body were trying to piece itself back together, Charles could hear Alice whimpering, saw one of the men waiting outside the circle marked in chalk come forward and then cross back with Alice in his arms. Two men moved Erika, who was either doing a good impression of genuine unconsciousness or actually limp, and then it was Charles’s turn. They abandoned the wheelchair.

Trying to keep a grip on his stomach, Charles focused on breathing while being carried. He caught a glimpse of the teleporter shuffling out of the circle, sweat running down his face. The men carrying him and the women were dressed in paramilitary black body armor, as was the Asian man referred to as Zero. The gruff man from the first meetup. Seven operatives that he’d seen, very organized, very precise. At least one of them was a mutant, and they had prepared for telepathic interference. The fact that both Erika and Alice wore the devices as well suggested that their kidnappers didn’t know about Charles’ mutation. At least that was good news.

As for the devices themselves, they were fundamentally different from the helmets he and Erika had unearthed along with the children all those years ago. They didn’t cover his whole head, and the static they gave off suggested a counter-signal to his powers, not a shield. Gritting his teeth in anticipation of pain, Charles reached out the tiniest thread of himself.

It fizzled to nothing in the jamming field. No echo. A grim smile took his features, and he began testing just how strong the device was.

Their captors got them settled in the back of a van of some kind, big enough to accommodate them all but with bench seats along the walls instead of more usual seating arrangements, and he got his first good look at Erika since the men had first pulled weapons. She was lolling loosely against the soldier trying to strap her in, wrists locked in some sort of clear, rigid plastic handcuffs, but she wasn’t bruised and her color was good. Better than Alice’s, who was conscious and had required a couple of rough slaps before she stopped trying to fight being handcuffed to the bench. At this point, he was actually glad for the telepathy jammer, because he would have done some truly awful things to the soldiers if he'd been free to. He couldn’t even reach her hand to comfort her, so he settled for imagining retribution and telling her everything would be all right.

Well, the three of them would be safe. It was getting almost impossible that they’d be able to escape without blowing their cover. Once Alice knew Charles had been lying to her for three years, she might, with ample justification, never speak to him.

One of the soldiers wedged himself in between the two women and reached up to take off his helmet. Zero glared harshly at him while he buckled himself in. “Don’t.”

“It’s the damn buzzing in my ears,” the man muttered, hand falling away. “Just wanted to take it off a minute, that’s all.”

“You do that, some mutant could have you singing ‘I’m a little teapot’ while you tried to kick our asses.” Wraith, who looked like he wanted nothing in the world as much as a nap, still managed to get the words out with the sharpness of an NCO talking to a particularly stupid private. “You just leave that alone. Inhibitor’s got enough juice to run all the way to DC before we got to change the batteries, and by then we’ll be hanging our hats somewhere the big bad telepaths can’t find us.”

Erika’s lips twitched, very subtly. To anyone else, it would have looked like nothing. To Charles, who’d been reading her face for years for the sheef joy of it, it was clear as newsprint. Erika was awake, had heard, and had a plan ready for action. That, and was trying hard not to laugh.

Maybe he would make them sing.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“Shut up, mutie-lover.” One of the soldiers elbowed him hard in the ribs. “You just sit tight. You cooperate, nothing bad’s gonna happen to your lady friends. Not even the mutant bitch.”

“Take your own advice, man,” Wraith mumbled. “Shut up. Don’t be fraternizing with the prisoners.”

Charles raised an eyebrow at the teleporter. “Why are you working with bigots like him?” Having been pushing all of his power outwards for the last two minutes and seeing no results, he relaxed his telepathy. “Money? Blackmail? Extortion? Whatever it is, you don’t have to endure it. We know people who can help.”

“Man, where do you think you’re at?” Wraith cracked his eyelids. “It looks to me like you’re going to a secret prison where you’re gonna give up all your ‘people’ or get some seriously bad shit done to you. And you think I’ve got problems?”

“As a matter of fact,” Erika Lehnsherr said, her voice almost soft enough to be lost in the rumble of the engine and the road under the wheels, “you do.”

And then the noise hedging Charles Xavier’s mind was gone, and there was a sequence of loud pops not unlike delicate firecrackers. Of the five men in the back with them, two were suddenly grabbing at their helmets and radiating excruciating pain. The other three, and the two in the front compartment, were simply and abruptly stripped of their mental armor of noise.

Charles rolled his shoulders and reached out. He didn’t take particular care in rendering unconscious the soldiers in the back compartment. None of them save Wraith, Zero, and the talkative human knew anything but their particular part of the mission. From rummaging around in those three he learned that they were in the outskirts of DC, heading towards a government building with a telepathy-dampened room in the basement. The plan was to threaten or torture Erika and Alice until Charles told them everything he knew about the mutants. Especially Magneto and the X-Men.

 _Thank you, love._ Warm gratitude and shaky relief washed against Erika’s natural boundaries, and he wrapped his wife in a mental embrace. _That was awful. Shall we see if we can muck up their operations a bit, or just go home?_

 _I think that the less impression our escape makes, the better. Especially with Alice in tow._ His wife’s emotions flooded him again - cold anger at the unconscious men around them, her burning desire to destroy them and the organization they served, her concern for his safety. Her quiet, compelling need to protect him from not only the hurt he would feel if Alice were injured or killed but from the look in those wide green eyes if she decided he was a murderer as well as a liar.

At the moment, his assistant and lover was unnerved but vindictively glad. “That was so fast! I didn’t realize the telepath could find us from so far away, and when they were talking about inhibitors... well, I was worried.” A watery smile gave Charles a rather warm case of guilt. “Are they coming for us or do we need to make a break for it?” She nodded to Wraith. “He has my handcuff keys. Can you pass them to me, Charles?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Erika said quietly, and the various fasteners holding Charles and Alice unclasped and unwound themselves while the handcuffs in question simply popped open. _I think it would be best if the driver deposited us at the Center in D.C.; it would certainly involve the least time in transit and minimize how much control you need to exert._ “But if you would take the plastic rod from him that unlocks this device around my wrists, Alice, it would be extremely helpful.”

Charles sent his agreement to her and changed the destination in the driver’s mind. The man in the passenger seat, he just put into a semi-conscious trance. The telepath kept a borrowed eye on the road. That particular mistake had been particularly costly before, and he’d been alone at the time.

Mild shock jolted through Alice as she blinked, retrieved the plastic key, and sat back down after shoving a soldier to the floor. “I didn’t know you could do all of those at once, ma’am.” Of course, it was just as much Erika’s frigid calm that surprised her. Her mind flashed through the past few minutes and she began to see behind the carefully maintained facade of Mrs. Charles Xavier. “Did you break the inhibitors?”

Her hands free, Erika reached up and unfastened the straps holding the bulky plastic arrangement against her head and then discarded it with a small flicker of disgust. “Batteries, as I imagine you know from the warning labels, tend to take it very badly if you insert them improperly. I simply reversed the electron flow of the devices they were wearing. I suggest not touching any of their helmets if you can help it - a leaking battery can be quite toxic.”

“Oh. Right.” Alice looked at Charles. He pulled back, trying only to see her mind from the outside. She was still frightened.

“The telepath probably has the driver,” he consoled her, feeling more than the usual guilt that came with lying to her. “We’ll be home safe in no time.”

“Are you unhurt, husband?” Erika eased out of her seat and set about removing the already disabled inhibitor from his head, pressing a careful kiss to his cheek. _You’d tell me if you were, but appearances are appearances. Besides, you look dreadful. Our space-bending friend didn’t agree with you, either?_

“A bit queasy.” _Remind me why she isn’t to know?_ “Teleportation is a terrible way to travel.”

 _Safety. Security. Information control. Avoiding someone doing something more permanent the next time they try to kidnap you._ She kissed him very carefully, her fingertips brushing over his face, and then he felt a hot spark of frustration against his cheek as she felt a trickle of his guilt through their link. “Alice,” she said very softly, her arm still around Charles’s shoulder and her hand against his jaw, “you had best come here and let him reassure himself that you’re safe and well, or my husband is going to worry all the way home.”

He squeezed Erika’s arm and held out his other hand to Alice. After a cautious look at Erika, she took his hand and moved over to sit beside him. “I’m all right, Mister Xavier,” she told him as he brushed her hair away from the bruising on her temple and cheek. “My hearing and vision are fine, and I might be sick on one of these bastards, but I’m all right.”

Alice’s expression was getting more nervous the longer he touched her, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop yet. Then Erika laughed, very softly, and brushed a kiss against his cheek before leaning back against the frame of the van.

“If you’re going to kiss her and tell her how wonderfully brave she is, Charles,” his wife said aloud, “don’t hold back on my account.”

Alice froze, eyes wide, and Charles watched her go from panicked to relieved to outraged. “You know?” she asked Erika in a tight whisper.

“For some time now,” Erika confirmed, her voice quite mild but her mind a mix of relief and gentle chagrin and a certain sadistic amusement at what she was sure was about to happen next.

 _You’re awful sometimes_ , Charles told her with the part of his mind that wasn’t bracing himself for a blow.

_Weren’t you the one advocating an increase in honesty, Charles?_

“Bugger,” he said.

Alice turned her full fury at Charles. “ _You_ knew she knew? You knew and let me stew in worry and guilt and - and - _sympathy_?” In her head she’d started in on a long list of insults for him ranging from unflattering to unenlightened to obscene. Perhaps he should feel touched by her restraint. “You complete prick!”

“Alice -”

“In fairness to my husband,” Erika noted with deceptively sweet mildness, “I haven’t mentioned to you that I’ve been conducting an affair with his sister - with his knowledge, of course - since well before you joined our official family.”

Closing his eyes, Charles covered his face with both hands. “Oh, thank you, Erika, that makes this so much better.”

_Happy to help, my husband._

“Your sister?” Incredulity and discomfort now mingled with Alice’s rage, but thankfully she was turning them towards Erika now. “Really. His sister.”

“She’s actually quite remarkable. Unique.” Erika’s smile was the same fond, wistful crook of her lips that always seemed to come when they were discussing Raven - or Mystique, as she insisted on being called now. “And I apparently have something of a weakness for spirited younger women with a tendency to be uncompromising.”

_Oh, darling wife, I regret to inform you that you may find one of the students has inexplicably introduced caterpillars into your garden._

Now Alice was looking at the both as if she was contemplating jumping from the moving vehicle, and Erika laughed very softly before carefully holding up both hands. “If I were attracted to you, Alice, I promise you that my husband and I would have had this conversation with you quite some time ago. You’re his taste entirely.”

“Oh, of course,” Alice practically spat. “Because why else would you have this conversation with me? I guess I really am the woman on the side.”

“You are the woman that I have trusted with the man I love above everything but my people for three years, Alice Paige,” Erika said, her voice fierce with the commanding authority that in Magneto’s hands could still city streets and make the hardest servants of the state blanch, “and we are having this conversation because if you are important enough to him to risk being tortured to extort information from him - to keep your wits and courage about you in the midst of all of this - then I am no longer willing to indulge my own vanity by making you and Charles pretend that you are not in love with each other.”

Alice’s fury wavered. “We’ll see about that,” she said in a low, clipped voice, glaring at Charles and sending a hot spike of anger into him as she did. Then her eyes bored back into Erika. “Apparently you’ve been fooling everyone with the mousy act. Are the two of you hiding anything else from me?”

Charles touched her hand - just a brush of fingers, offering but not demanding. “Yes, Alice. There’s much we aren’t telling you. There are too many powerful people who want to hurt us and the people we care about. What we aren’t telling you would make you a target all by yourself instead of insurance for my cooperation.”

“All revolutions have their secrets,” Erika reasoned, allowing her voice to soften into something more like her accustomed tone at home. “Charles and I are keeping a great many of them.”

Shaking her head, Alice’s hands curled into fists. “Yes, of course. I knew that was part of the job when I took it. I meant anything about you or us personally.” Eyes pleading, she took Charles’ hand now. He felt her pain at the betrayal gaining ground over her anger, and his own shame at having been part of it.

“Remember your Hanisch - ‘the personal is political.’” Erika’s mind invited Charles’ touch, and he felt her well of quiet sympathy for the girl. _The things we do to the people who love us, Charles._

 _We do it to others, too,_ he answered bitterly. _It just doesn’t bother us so much._

 _Let me._ “There are things about myself - my awareness of the world, my commitment, my powers - that I hide,” Erika continued into the aching silence that seemed to smother the road noise outside. “That I have kept hidden for many years so that Charles and the school will always have a protector who is not planned for, who our enemies cannot prepare against. So that I can pursue our work unnoticed. There is work that Charles has done - quiet, patient work that would make him the foremost target of many of our enemies - in the utmost secrecy. For both of us, the lies we’ve built up about our marriage and the face we show the world are a shield. A protection not only for ourselves but for those we protect. You’ve been part of that - knowingly and unknowingly - since the moment Charles chose you.”

“Don’t.” Alice was wiping her eyes now, blinking away the brightness there. “Don’t try to make it seem like you lied to me because I’m special.”

“I’m sorry, Alice.” Charles’s voice was low, pained. “I know it doesn’t begin to make up for the deception, but I am. And please, listen. I want you to stay. I need you for your skills as much as your companionship.” He squeezed her hand and pulled all his power back inside himself except to watch the driver, because the force of his desire scared him enough to want to put the inhibitor back on. “I love you. But I won’t try to make you stay. I’ll try to convince you, of course,” he laughed a little, even as tears pricked at his own eyes. “But that will be all.”

“Charles....” She stared at him for a long moment, hand straying up to brush a tear away from his cheek, and then she burst out with a small, frustrated, helplessly charmed laugh. “You have the most infuriatingly lovely blue eyes. How am I supposed to stay angry with you when you look at me like that?”

Catching her hand, he smiled. “I could close my eyes. But I don’t want to.”

“Then you’d only remind me of how adorably boyish you look when you’re asleep.” She sighed and shook her head, then offered Erika a plaintive look. “How do you stay angry with him? I’ve seen you do it.”

“Long practice,” Erika said, but she could not help smiling. “And not always successfully, even then.”

Looking between the two of them, Charles was overcome with relief, love, joy - and not a little foreboding. “Oh, god. You’re colluding already. I’m doomed.”

“Quite.” Erika’s smile turned wicked, and Alice’s mind flickered with fresh surprise. “But not, I think, in the way you’re imagining at the moment.”

Then Alice began laughing, and shortly all three of them were shaking with it. As far as kidnappings went, it was unquestionably the most lively and congenial he’d ever been involved with. Perhaps he ought to arrange it more often as a sort of therapy.

On the other hand, it was probably easier to just resolve to be more honest in the future.

He waited until they arrived and he could send the driver away with his memories wiped (and a cargo of men with a sudden phobia of firearms, a strong desire to rethink their lives and an irresistible urge to whistle a certain ditty about a teapot) to contact Emma. Long-distance took more concentration without Cerebro, and accidentally pushing the driver into taking them into traffic would have ruined the mood.

_Sorry for the delay. They had inhibitors. We’re safe and unhurt._

He felt her relief, but it didn’t dispell the icy fury or stone-clawed grip of terror around her heart. _Glad to hear it. You need to get back as soon as you can. Someone’s taken Scott and the Greys._


	14. Chapter 14

**New York -  7:30 pm - November 3, 1973**

The fierce skyglow of Manhattan at night smothered most of the stars, leaving the night an indistinct haze of shadows and half-light in which even the most colorful display could vanish after a block or so. Given that the three figures up on the roof of the old brick apartment building overlooking the Half Note and the intersection of Spring Street and Hudson were not dressed even slightly for sleath, that was probably a good thing. They weren’t here to make noise, after all.

Not tonight.

Which Alex could put up with for a little while longer. Soon they wouldn’t have to hide their superiority. Once there were enough Marauders - and once Father had found more ways to better mutantkind - it wouldn’t matter what the blind, weak humans thought about anything.

“Stop fidgeting.” A gloved hand slid over his and squeezed gently. Lorna Dane wasn’t wearing a mask at the moment - she changed them regularly, and tonight’s bird mask had turned out to be uncomfortable - so the only thing getting in the way of him staring at her face was a few soft emerald strands of hair. “They’ve been in there a couple of hours. They’ll come out when they come out. Okay?”

There were a number of reasons why wasting time waiting was not okay - chief among them the coordination with the distraction at the Xavier Foundation fundraiser that Father had learned details of by his usual mysterious ways - but none of them seemed worth disagreeing with Lorna. Especially when he couldn’t tell her why they were on a schedule to begin with. Alex shook some of the tension out of his shoulders and gave her a half-smile. “Okay. But only ‘cause you’re here.”

“Behave.” She smiled back, shy and private, and slid in against him to rest her head on his shoulder. “We don’t want to get distracted. What do you think they’re talking about down there?”

Alex snorted, then pitched his voice in the same nasal whine that he’d used to piss Scott off when they were kids. “‘Well, Jean, what do you want to talk about before I romantically get under your skirt?’”

Lorna giggled and tried on a genuinely terrible faux-English accent. “‘Oh, darling, whatever you’d like. I’m only thinking about how I’m going to convince you to settle for a discreet blowjob later. Don’t you think this out-of-date nonsense we’re listening to so we can feel sophisticated is lovely?’”

Alex laughed. “Since when is she British? ‘Why, yes, sugarlump, I will agree to anything you say because your ass is just that sexy.’”

“Don’t most uptown girls sound that way? I just sort of thought they must. You know, from the movies.” Lorna gave him a shy smile, then tried another accent - it was probably supposed to be a Southern belle, but she was absolutely awful at it, too, so it was hard to tell. “‘Oh, you. I wonder if I put enough paint on my nails... and you wouldn’t happen to be thinking of going behind my back with that diamond strumpet, would you?’”

“In fairness, he never really sounded like this, either,” Alex admitted, grinning from ear to ear. “‘Diamond? Who? I am simply unable to even see any other woman than you, Honey Bunch. How about that blow job?’”

Lorna lost it for a minute against his shoulder. When she got her laughter under control, she smothered her voice down to a whisper. “If you ever call me Honey Bunch, I’ll stab you with a whole drawer of cutlery.”

Half-supporting her weight while he almost doubled over himself, he kissed her temple. “If I ever call you that, you’ll be doing me a favor. Aim for the eyes.”

“I love you,” she whispered, and kissed him. “How can the genetic future of mutantkind be such useless squares? Do you think that’s their secondary mutation?”

Smiling into the kiss, Alex let himself forget the mission for almost half a minute. “Probably. That or the Xavier stuffiness is contagious. Remind me to wash after we get home.”

Her lips quirked up in a tiny smile that said maybe she’d like to help him with that, and then she kissed his cheek and leaned against the edge of the roof to look down again. “People are leaving. ‘Oh, snookums, I suppose we have to go. The blowjob will have to wait. Maybe I can give you a kiss on the train if not too many people are looking. A girl has to think about her reputation.’”

Alex grinned, opening his mouth for another mocking response, but wasn’t fast enough.

“‘I suppose, cupcake, but only if I you promise to wear the bridle and whinny in bed tonight.’”

Lorna made a sound into his shoulder like she was trying not to think too hard about something that made her nauseous. Alex missed what was probably her expression of disgust, though, because he was too busy staring in horror at their team-mate with dyed-red hair and a somewhat manic grin.

“What?” Chimera tilted her head in that reptilian way of hers. “Wimps. I didn’t even bring real horses into it.”  

“How can you even _think_ things like that?” Lorna blurted out, finally extracting her head from Alex’s shoulder.

“Oh, Polaris. Sweetie. Angel. Honey Bunch.” Chimera bared her teeth in a smile. “You wouldn’t believe what the flatscans down there are thinking right now. It’s _much_ worse, trust me.”

“When can you aim for her eyes?” Alex muttered under his breath. “Well, thanks, Chimera, now we’re both very happy to think about this mission. Are they going back to the same subway station they came from?”

The arguably less stable of the Marauders’ two available telepaths adjusted the mask she never seemed to take off, made a series of faces that could have meant anything, then shook her head. “They’re going to walk for a little while. He’s hard to read, but I think he’s thinking about her neck. Heh. I think he’s thinking. She’s feeling all sorts of squishy things. Like slugs made of marshmallows. And his lips. And the places in her head where the other one is, those are _breathing_. I like her. I’m glad we’re bringing her home.”

Alex sighed. As usual, Chimera was about one part useful, one part horrible, and one part who the fuck knew.

“Right. Okay. Walking is good. We’ll tail them until we’re close to another station.”

Lorna nodded, then got her game face on. “I hope you both strapped your harnesses on right,” Polaris told them both, “or this is going to be very uncomfortable.”

Then she lifted all three of them into the air on invisible strings, pulling them along the rooftops and ducking between buildings. Even with his harness on properly, there were straps digging into Alex’s thighs, waist and shoulders. “I swear I’m just gonna get a chainmail suit one of these days. Can’t be worse.”

She threw him a sympathetic little smile, but kept them in the air. A block later, and they were landing on some rich idiot’s balcony and watching Scott kiss the woman he didn’t know was his perfect genetic match. It was a little uptown and tentative for Alex’s taste, but they seemed pretty absorbed by it. Probably the best chance there were going to get.

“Needles,” Polaris whispered, holding out her hand. Chimera obligingly extracted a pair of metal-encased syringes, and Lorna floated them out of the telepath’s hand. Straightened them in the air, using her hands to shape the motion, and then flung them like particularly slow, graceful darts that constantly corrected in flight.

The first one hit Scott in the thigh, and he barely had time to move his hand from Jean’s shoulder before he dropped like a bag of grain. One of Chimera’s green energy snakes slithered up out of the pavement and caught him before he could crack his head, holding his glasses on and guiding him down toward the ground.

The second needle caught Jean Grey in the shoulder instead of the intended site closer to the collarbone, and the girl’s head turned sluggishly to look toward them before she dropped. Chimera flinched - nearly dropping Scott in the process - and Alex had the feeling of pressure-change in his ears he associated with noises too high in pitch for him to hear.

“What was that?” Lorna demanded, her eyes wide.

Chimera, paler than he’d ever seen her, whimpered where she’d fallen to her knees. “She screamed. Very loud. For Frost.” Holding her head in her hands, teeth clenched, she looked up at Alex in trembling anger. “Get the dampener on her right now.”

Lorna was already moving. She might be shy and occasionally squeamish, but nobody ever said his girl wasn’t smart enough to think on her feet; she’d grabbed the dampeners off his belt as she went, gliding down to the street, and had them both in place - and the happy/unconscious couple of the street - by the time Chimera got herself together enough to let Lorna fly them both down.

“So they know we’ve got them,” Lorna said as she set Alex on his feet. “Can you carry him and run at the same time?”

“They know someone has them,” he corrected, replacing Scott’s glasses with the blinders and hefting his brother over his shoulder with a grunt. “And I can get to the tunnels in a hurry.”

“Good.” She kissed his cheek, then bent down and scooped Jean up. That had been Chimera’s job, but the telepath was avoiding both their hostages like they were stove burners. He’d talk to her about that later.

He needed to save his breath right now.


	15. Chapter 15

**New York -  7:58 pm - November 3, 1973**

The silly girl was half-hidden behind a decorative column, humming to herself, hands cupped around a  color-changing light. A particularly slimy school board member was talking with a textbook company executive a couple of yards away, both smiling and thinking very loudly about the bribe that would change hands later that night.

Emma sighed. Apparently tonight was going be full of these little tests.

“Ahem.” She blocked Allison’s shot, glaring. “We talked about this.”

Allison tried to look haughty and innocent at the same time, which was not very effective. “Fireworks liven up a party.”

Apparently further discussion was necessary. Emma gestured towards one of the back rooms. “Go. Sit. Think about what you’ve done.” _The Xavier Foundation must remain respectable. What do you think would happen if it wasn’t anymore? What would happen to the Centers?_

There was a very particular mental flavor to _oh, I hadn’t thought of that, now I feel like an idiot_ which years of working with children had ensured Emma Frost was intimately familiar with. Allison’s was a little more indignantly stubborn than most, but the girl tried to stick her hands in the non-existent pockets of her dress and became very interested in her shoes. “Fine,” she muttered, and wandered back toward the little reception room that had been set aside for the use of the students during the night (on the extremely reasonable theory that expecting teenagers to maintain respectable behavior for several hours without a break was out of the question). Alice opened the door to another such room, followed by two waiters. Ororo took the stage, Danielle flickered the lights to get people’s attention, and the hubbub of the room quieted to a murmur.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ororo began, poised and charming. “Thank you so much for coming. We...”

Emma jumped as a sudden, strong burst of fear and anger erupted across the room. She had only rushed two steps towards the Xaviers’ prep room when the emotional noise vanished just as suddenly.

 _Charles? Erika?_ Emma called out, scanning the crowd for anything out of place. Nothing that she could see. _Erika!_ Still no answer.

The prep room, when she arrived, was nearly empty. The waiter’s cart half-blocked the door, Erika’s purse sat on a table to the side, and Alice’s ever-present notepad was lying open on the floor.

 _Allison, Danielle, Joanna, John._ Thankfully, all but John were already in their waiting room. _John, forget about the food. Go to the others. All of you, barricade the doors. Open them for no one but me or Ororo._ She felt their surprise and distress, and projected some of her own firmness of purpose before nudging them to shield their minds.

Now icy calm, she sent all she knew to Ororo. Out on the stage, the hostess’s voice faltered only slightly. Half a second later, Emma was calling out to Heather and Kurt back at the school.

_...soon as you can. I’ll start looking for them once everyone’s been inf--_

**_EMMA!_** Phoenix’s voice burst like thunder in her head, furious and wild and just a hint of pleading. Danger. They were in danger. Jean and Scott were in danger. Emma’s fury and need to protect them struck her like lightning, erasing everything else--all other emotion, all other thought, even physical sensation. Her power flashed out towards them, ready to vaporize their assailants.

Before she connected, their bright lights died, leaving a sea of faintly glowing human minds. No trace of the Greys or Summers.

“NO!”

Emma found herself on her knees, half-supported by a table, staring at her own glittering hands. The cold clarity of diamond was transforming her howling thirst for vengeance into a slow, frozen hunger that fueled her without clouding her judgement.

She stood. Took Erika’s purse, Alice’s notepad. Outside, on the stage, Ororo was explaining that Charles Xavier was suffering an unexpected illness and summoning one of the other prominent figures to the stage to handle the speaking duties. Emma dismissed that particular problem from her mind - Ororo would manage it, and she had more pressing problems. The Xaviers were not here, and she could not feel them. If the purpose had been assassination, leaving the bodies would have been less risky and more effective. Therefore, a kidnapping was more likely. Also seemingly impossible, but the more rational impossibility. A kidnapping prepared with searching telepaths in mind.

The cold rage pressing against the crystalline walls of her heart faded a notch. It was possible - not certain or even likely, but possible - that what could be done once could be done twice. Slowly, painfully, she risked the shift back into flesh and blood.

The rage and the fear were bearable. She reached out for Heather’s mind again and found Scott’s adopted sister already organizing watches of the mansion, her own fear sealed away in a corner where it was left to pound on the walls.

 _More bad news?_ Tempo thought at the first touch of Emma’s mind.

_Scott and the Greys are gone, too._

What spilled back over the telepathic link to her was the last thing she expected - laughter. Bright, sharp laughter tinged with schadenfreude.   _If someone took those three, I really feel for them. The poor bastards are so fucked, and they don’t even know it._

Emma felt herself grimace. _I hope you’re right._ She pulled Erika’s mirror out, made sure she looked more or less the same as she had before. _I’ll bring the students home. Then I can start looking._

_Kurt has an idea. He wants to try coming for you. You’ll have to be in the room and look at it carefully._

_I’ll go to the children._

Danielle opened the door, annoyance and fear warring on her face. John and Joanna were holding tables over their head, ready to replace them.

_Nightcrawler?_

_Ja, White Queen,_ he replied crisply, as cold as her diamond mind and twice as calm. Linking with him was clean, effortless. She barely felt him looking through her eyes. _Yes, I think this will do. Tell the students to stand against the walls._

She did. A cloud of black smoke erupted in the room and Nightcrawler stepped out of it. Several of the students actually gasped.

Even for Emma, who was fairly accustomed to seeing Kurt armed and in armor by now, it was a little too much like the devil appearing in a theatrical production not to get a little bit of a shiver. But then Kurt smiled his calm, reassuring smile and the deep blue of his skin was just skin and the gleam of his eyes were just eyes. “ _Guten Abend, meine Freunde._ Please do not take deep breaths. I am told the smell is not so good, yes?” He wrapped the three broad fingers of each hand around a wrist - Danielle and Allison - and vanished in a fresh cloud of clinging black smoke that had not entirely dissipated when he reappeared, three long boxes gripped in his hands and by his tail. He was breathing hard, as if he’d run a considerable distance, but smiling in a way that showed his teeth. “A gift from Tempo. She says ‘party clothes,’ but I do not think this is what she means, ja?”

Emma opened her mouth to protest, but he’d already brought them, so she strapped the armor on under her skirt and over the bodice of her gown, leaving the heels and boxes on the floor. Getting into their fighting gear seemed to make John and Joanna calmer, at least, so that perhaps Heather wasn’t being entirely paranoid or ridiculous.

“You, I take one at a time,” he told them, and Emma could taste his amusement. “‘Big strapping specimens,’ this is the phrase I want, yes?”

Joanna rolled her eyes.

John saw and grinned. “Ladies first.”

“Fuck y-” Johanna vanished in mid-curse, accompanied by the peculiar rushing sound of air filling a void that always followed Kurt’s teleports. John didn’t even get that much warning - Kurt simply appeared behind him and vanished again, leaving Emma alone in a room filled with heavy black smoke and the stench of sulfur.

Thankfully, she had only a few seconds to hold her breath before Nightcrawler returned for her, blue arms wrapping around her waist, and then the world turned inside out. Or maybe that was just her stomach. She stumbled onto the deck of the sheltered veranda, extremely grateful for the light breeze and fresh air.

Kurt released her to lean on one of the columns, breathing and sweating hard.

“You’re all right?”

Unable or unwilling to speak, he nodded. _Ja. Food and rest will help, but I cannot jump again for some time. Tomorrow, perhaps._

“Good.” She let herself shift back into diamond. It settled her nerves and her stomach alike.

Inside, half the metal shutters over the windows were lowered, the others being closed by pairs of the younger students. Most were doing it the old-fashioned way, one was using telekinesis, and another singing softly to the mechanisms.

Heather came striding down the corridor that housed the secret elevator, not stopping to help. Considering that - given her powers - she could have closed and locked every door and shuttered every window herself before anyone else could blink, that would have surprised most people. Emma knew better, not only from familiarity with the drill the school practiced once a month but because the reasoning was obvious to anyone who’d ever been a teacher - idle young people and panic made for a terrible combination. Young people who were making themselves useful were both reassured by the activity and distracting themselves from their fears. Down in the safe room, the handful of teachers who hadn’t been enjoying a weekend away would be ensuring that students organized everything from the distribution of food and water to checking that everyone had comfortable shoes for walking (or running, if needed).

That was the theory, anyway. From the tense serenity she could taste radiating from Heather, reality seemed to be conforming to expectation more closely than usual.

“Emma.” Heather offered her hand. “I put John and Joanna to work on the windows, but feel free to pull them if you want them. I’ll be geared up and ready as soon as I get everyone settled in and I’m sure Douglas has everything under control downstairs. ‘Roro has the Foundation event covered?”

Emma nodded. “And she’ll call for me if something changes. So far the kidnapping was the only incident at the gala.” She’d much rather Kurt had brought the weather-shaper back, too, but that was for purely emotional reasons. Keeping up a facade of control and calm was the second most important goal of the evening. “Once we’re secure here I’ll start looking. There may have been unshielded witnesses.” Even if there weren’t, it was only a matter of time before the attackers let their guard down.

The flicker of discomfort in Heather - muffled, in diamond form, but still perceptible - didn’t reach her face, but Emma’s reaction must have slipped through onto hers. The time-bender spread her hands slightly in apology. “Sorry. I just can’t get used to the idea that you or Jean or Charles can sift whole cities like sand in your fingers and come out with one person having one thought, no matter how many years I’ve been around it. It still scares me. Reflex.”

“I don’t blame you.” Emma watched the students finish the last of the ground floor windows and jog up the stairs to shutter the others. “It will take time, and much effort. But it is still enormous power.” Crystalline lips quirked up. “Of course, you could have put a frog in my bed just now.”

Heather laughed quietly, simmering with bittersweet memory and buried fear. “The Professor always told me things like that when I was younger and got nervous about Scott or Jean or Ororo. ‘If their abilities frighten you, liebling, how much must yours frighten them?’ It helped keep things in perspective. Still does.” Her face hardened. “We’re going to get them back.”

“Yes.” Emma’s voice was harder even than her skin. She did not say, _And make sure the people who did this can never do it again,_ because while the X-Men accepted casualties incurred on missions, they didn’t pursue revenge for its own sake. Charles had been very clear about that: protection, not punishment.

Well, Emma had worked on her own before. She could do it again.

Of course, that moment was when Charles’ mind tapped politely on her shielding.

Shifting to flesh - and only just managing not to gasp as her emotions came flooding back in full force - she answered him.

“Well,” she told Heather. “That’s one problem solved.”

Heather’s shoulders tensed slightly. “The Greys?”

“No.” Her voice shook, and she hated it. Shifting back into diamond was an almost unbearable relief. If they were actually dead, stripped out of the world, it would be tempting to stay that way indefinitely. “Charles. He, Erika and Alice are safe in the DC center. The assistant director is driving them home.”

“Good.” Heather’s cheeks flushed a little with her shame at the intensity of the relief she felt - loud enough that Emma could hear it ring through the crystalline clarity of her mind like a bell. “I mean... Fuck. You know what I mean. Can you tell Charles to hurry? Tell him that I think we’re going to need what’s in the basement.”

She did, difficult though it was through the diamond. Charles’ strength and their mutual familiarity were the only things that made it possible. “Done. What else is in the basement?”

“Not my secret to tell.” Heather flickered like an off-sped projector. “I’m going to check on the safe room, then get geared up. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

“Agreed.”


	16. Chapter 16

It was a big room. A very big room - even with the lights shining on the computer consoles in front of her, she couldn’t see any walls past the edge of the glare. The sounds of the reels echoed through the room like it was huge, anyway, and the cabinets receded into darkness.

The cold damp of the air voted for underground.

She shivered, which hurt her shoulders a little. No matter how evenly the straps distributed her weight, she was still bound to a hard surface whose casket-like shape, molded to her body, didn’t help the natural pull of gravity trying to make her fall forward.

 _Well,_ Phoenix said groggily in her head, _this is the second worst place I’ve ever woken up._

Jean snorted quietly, a little unnerved at how even the small sound moved through the room. _No, this is the worst. Unless your previous one involved wearing one of the Professor’s helmets._

 _Under the rose bushes in the garden without being sure where my dress was,_ Phoenix supplied. _That was worse._ A pause. _Why is it so quiet? It’s like the whole world isn’t thinking anything._

Breathing slowly around a renewal of the panic she’d fought off only minutes before, Jean closed her eyes. Now she and Phoenix were facing each other in a mental version of their room.

She put a gentle hand on her sister’s shoulder. “The world is still there. Whoever did this has a portable Time Out. And something else for our telekinesis. I think it’s part of the...pod thing we’re strapped to.”

Phoenix visibly started to panic, stopped herself, then hugged Jean tightly. “They didn’t turn off your brains or my winning personality,” she whispered, “so we’re going to get out of this just fine.”

Jean let out a half-laugh, half-sob into Phoenix’s hair. “Yeah. I think I’d be catatonic if they’d separated us.”

“Never happen, sis.” Phoenix kissed her cheek and rifled gently through Jean’s memories at the same time. “Okay. So.... scary underground hideout-lab with all the computer screens still on. Means Doctor Subterranean is probably coming back quick. We don’t know where Scott is or if he’s all right, but all our pieces are still intact so I’m going to pretend that’s promising. If we can’t feel anything, probably nothing can hear us either.” Phoenix managed a small smile. “Okay, maybe a little worse than the rose bushes. But you’re wrong - someone does know we’re missing.”

Jean did a little memory-borrowing of her own, and she smiled almost vindictively. “Good work. I wouldn’t want to be them when Emma comes crashing down.”

“Yeah. I hope she makes a mess.” Phoenix kissed her cheek. “But let’s not wait around and see if we’re going to be vivisected, okay? I vote we get out of here. Professor Xavier showed me some tricks with straps...” she paused and blushed. “Not like that!”

Jean made a face. “Eew. Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself, please. Well, those that aren’t about Scott. Or Emma.” She blushed. “I may have peeked at your memories.”

“Wait, wait, my straight arrow sister has a crush on Emma Frost? When did this happen? How did I not know? _I live in your head_. How did I not find out about this?”

Jean sighed. “Is this really the time to talk about it?”

“Um. Point.” Phoenix bit her lip. “But later. Later we will be talking about it a lot. Possibly with pictures.”

Jean bit her lip, closed her eyes (recursively) and counted to ten. “Okay. Tell me the completely non-innuendous things you know about straps.”

Phoenix was showing her how to work her shoulders to change pressure on the straps and hopefully loosen them in the process when someone groaned. Definitely a man, definitely close - behind her? - and definitely in pain.

 _Scott!_ Phoenix’s mind-voice disappeared past the confines of their skull, and then Jean felt her sister blush. _Sorry, forgot._

At the moment, Jean didn’t care. She was too hopeful - too worried. “Scott?” she whispered.

“Jean?” Scott’s voice was raspy with dryness, but otherwise he didn’t sound too bad. “Are you all right?”

Relief flooded her, and Phoenix, now that she knew they weren’t alone. “We’re okay. Tied up and our powers are blocked, but okay.” Whether or not other unpleasant things had been done to them, Jean didn’t want to think about right now. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t see.” He took a deep breath - she could hear that - and when he spoke again his voice sounded a little more normal. “I don’t think I’m hurt, but I’m strapped down and I feel like I’ve had the world’s most intrusive medical exam. There’s something on my face, too - some kind of covering on my eyes - but when I open them, I can’t see anything at all. I can’t really turn my head, either. So there’s that. Blocked?”

Something besides the synthetic ruby that could block or absorb Scott’s force beams? That was both interesting and disconcerting. And definitely confirmed the fact that whoever had kidnapped them had been watching and researching them. Shuddering, Jean went back to leaning on the straps. “Yeah. Like Magneto’s helmet. Blocks the telekinesis, too.”

“Are you... is it hurting you?” He sounded worried. Really worried. “Like an echo chamber?”

“No. It’s weird and it scares me, but it doesn’t hurt.” She paused. “Echo chamber?”

“Old story. I’ll tell you about it when we get out of this. Whoever strapped us down was really serious about it.” Scott grunted softly.

“Do please save your strength, Mister Summers. The tensile strength of the polymer in the straps is considerable, and the tightening mechanism is electrical and automated to maintain a certain level of tightness. No simple ratchet to loosen.” A man’s voice, soft and urbane and very English, somewhere behind her. Coming closer as he continued speaking. “And I’m afraid I will be asking a great deal of your strength in the next few days, so it will be easier for everyone if you don’t struggle so. Thank you. It’s ever so much more helpful to have cooperative patients.”

“Patients?” Jean asked in alarm, turning her head toward the sound. The edge of the pod blocked her view, but she wanted to see this man if he came into her field of vision. “Are you going to tell us you’re a doctor?”

“Oh, yes. Among many other things, Miss Grey, I am most assuredly a doctor. Several times over, in fact, and under a number of different names.” He chuckled throatily, as if deeply amused by his own joke. “But fortunately, most of those skills will not be required at the moment. You’re both in excellent health. I can’t tell you how much of a relief that is.”

Then he walked into her vision, a narrowly tall man in a finely tailored three-piece suit, pale as a ghost, long hair and neat little beard both so intensely black they seemed to be made of congealed ink. He leaned over the computers for a moment, tapping at the keyboard with one hand while he leaned a walking stick against the desk with the other, and finally turned to face her.

He had a softly glowing red diamond - like the symbol from a playing card instead of a gem - in the middle of his forehead, and eyes like burning coals.

“Jean Grey,” he said in that same soft, cultured voice. “It’s such a pleasure to actually see you in person. I’ve been waiting a very, very long time for this.”

His voice crawled over her skin like a swarm of centipedes. Stomach knotted in revulsion, her voice wavered. “Who are you?”

“Nathaniel Essex, my dear girl. Not that I expect you to know me, of course - I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that you don’t - but I know you. Parents, John and Elaine Grey. Older sister, Sarah. Grandmothers, Allison and Elise. Great-grandmothers, Sylvia and Pamela and Rachel and Hannah. I could continue the genealogy at length, but I can see I’m boring you.” He offered her a small, courtly bow that was not actually mocking at all. “But who I am is singularly unimportant. It is who you are that signifies.”

 _Sis,_ Jean said to Phoenix, _when we get out of here, we’re going to have to rock-paper-scissors for who gets to tear into this creep first._

 _No, it’s allll you, sis._ Phoenix shook her head invisibly. _This guy really takes his crazy seriously._ “So, what, are you going to tell me I’m about to give birth to the Messiah?”

Essex smiled. Oh, god, that was a disturbing expression. “As a matter of fact,” he said, sounding pleased with himself or her or possibly both, “that comes very near the mark.”

 _Oh god oh god oh god ew ew ew ew ew ew._ “Which is?” Jean really, really didn’t want to know, but figuring out the weirdo’s motivations was important. Probably. _Would you object to having Emma wipe him from our memories, sis? I want to shriek for someone to squish him._

“Well, that brings us very directly to why you’re here.” Essex lowered his voice as though preparing to let her in on a very exciting secret. “You see, you’re going to be the mother of the most powerful mutant in history. An exponential advancement in potential, as far beyond the rest of us as we are beyond humanity. It’s a tremendous honor to be, shall we say, your midwife in the process.”

“Mid...wife...?” Jean heard her own voice from a distance. Not that she should be surprised that shock would kick her out of her own brain, but still being able to talk was new.

 _Got you. Not sleepy-time, sis,_ Phoenix said, pressing gently against her. _Stay with me. We want to squish this guy, remember?_ Jean wavered, stabilized. Still felt like she might fly to pieces in a light breeze, but better.

“An inexact term, I’ll admit. But then, composition was never my subject of specialization.” Essex sighed and shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I really ought to have prepared remarks for the occasion, but I never quite found the time. So you’ll have to bear with me.” He turned his head slightly, then sighed. “Your Mister Summers really does have the most strikingly creative way with words. I doubt I’d be able to make myself understood over him if I were allowing him to vocalize.”

 _He’s in Scott’s head. That monster is in Scott’s head._ Jean was galvanized into an incandescent hate. “If you don’t leave him alone, my sister and I are going to do bad, bad things to you, Doctor Essex,” she promised, voice dripping poison.

“Ah, yes. Your ‘sister.’ A most curious phenomenon, and quite unexpected.” Essex shook his head and sighed in quiet vexation. “It’s really such a pity I only acquired you so recently. The opportunity for study you would have provided.... Ah, well. One can only do so much with meddlesome individuals like the Xaviers running about. A problem which will not, one hopes, afflict our future endeavors together. But please, don’t concern yourself. I have absolutely no intention of allowing any harm whatsoever to come to Scott Summers. That would be completely counterproductive after all the trouble I went through to get him back, after all.”

 _He wants both of us. He’s in Scott’s head and he wants me pregnant. He’s going to use him to... Oh, God._ For the first time she could remember, Jean felt rage of her own.

“Never mind. I am definitely doing bad things to you.” Phoenix was fantasizing about using the banks of computer storage like a giant shoe. Normally, Jean would have objected, but under the circumstances she was prepared to make exceptions.

Essex sighed. “You are going to be a difficult patient, aren’t you? Really, all I’m doing is speeding up the timeline. It’s not as though you weren’t planning to breed with him eventually. I simply want to make sure that it occurs under the best possible conditions and care.”

“Best conditions?! CARE?!” Jean screamed. “ _YOU TIED ME TO A FUCKING COFFIN, YOU PSYCHO!_ ”

“Such language.” Essex sighed again. “Really, what do they teach young women these days? And it’s a very advanced medical scanner, I will have you know, and any resemblance to a coffin is purely superficial.”

 _All language is appropriate some time,_ Jean remarked to her sister as she continued screaming obscenities. _Now is the time for this language._

When she was finished, she was out of breath and Phoenix was impressed. _I don’t even know when you learned half those words, sis._

Nathaniel Essex, his expression shocked and dismayed, shook his head and turned away. “I am definitely going to need some tea before we continue with your examination,” he huffed, “and quite possibly a gag.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Westchester -  11:40pm - November 3, 1973**

It was near midnight when the Xavier Center car arrived in Westchester, driven by a man whose feathers peeked out of his sleeves and collar. Emma received them, still in diamond, along with Douglas. The driver slipped by, obviously eager to get into the house as quickly as possible, while Douglas helped Charles into the chair with the ease of long practice. “It’s good to see you intact, Professor. Mister Xavier. The students are holding up pretty well, considering, but I should get back down there as soon as possible.”

Alice fretted over Charles a moment longer, then followed the teacher.

“ _Danke sehr, mein Freund._ Emma can take us in.” Erika’s calm, familiar nod - unshaken by the day’s events - could not have been farther from the image of Erika Xavier she’d projected earlier in the night. “I take it that we have all abandoned subtlety for the moment, Miss Frost?”

Tossing her glittering hair over her shoulder, Emma snorted. “I only have enough restraint to keep from punching my way through the eastern seaboard, Professor.”

“ _Ich verstehe._ I am looking forward to the opportunity to exercise certain talents.” Erika’s eyes darkened with a cold edge of carefully contained fury. “But we have work to do first.”

“Yes.” Charles’ face, usually tempered by at least some warmth, was a cold mask over boiling fury. “Let’s go.”

In the secret elevator, Erika turned her hand at the panel of buttons, and Emma noticed the special access keyhole turning. They sank down farther than Emma had realized the shaft went - the Danger Room and attending spaces were something like three floors underground, with the safe room directly below. They spent enough time descending for about twice that depth.

The doors slid open on a completely steel-lined corridor, the only other door directly opposite. At least, she assumed it had to be a door. It was round like that of a vault, an embedded X the only marking. At the center were two nested circles, the larger concave, the smaller convex. In the center of the smallest shone a blue light.

Erika pushed Charles along with her power until he was in the center of the corridor a couple of yards from the vault. The blue light awoke, and a wider beam scanned across Charles’ grim eyes.

With a hydraulic hiss, the door split into two segments and opened.

The room on the other side was huge - a sphere maybe five stories high from apex to nadir. Lined in softly reflective panels, it was completely hollow and empty save for the walkway extending unsupported into its center. Twin stripes of guide lights gleamed into life ahead of him as Charles rolled forward into it, the curved console at the end of the path taking shape as the light grew.

Erika paused in the doorway, then gestured for Emma to wait. “The operation of the device will make sharing the room with him unpleasant,” she murmured. “And if you are inside when he begins, be sure that you don’t move.”

“What is it?” Emma didn’t like surprises on principle, and liked this one less than most; Magneto, the X-Men, the militias and the Centers - the Xaviers had shared so freely of their secrets that she hadn’t stopped to ask herself what else there might be that she didn’t know about. For the moment, she only cared if it would help find Scott and Jean and Phoenix.

For the moment.

“We call it Cerebro.” Erika reached out and touched the door lightly as it began to hiss closed. “Charles and Hank McCoy and I. It’s not easy to explain, but I suppose you could simplify it to an amplifier. It....” she paused. “Well, I imagine you’ll be able to feel in a moment.”

Curiosity subduing her caution, Emma stepped inside just as the door finished closing. The room went dark save for the guide lights.

“She’s right about moving,” he warned her as he lifted what looked like an open-work helmet. “Your diamond form should keep the worst of the discomfort at bay, though.”

Before she could finish nodding, Charles had put the helmet on. The room hummed softly, an invisible power source vibrating through the sphere, and then the panels seemed to drop away into an infinite distance as pinprick points of light blossomed around them - hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. Billions.

Minds. A world of minds, each one a tiny glowing figure in motion or at rest, each one alive and moving and arrayed like captive stars around a central point of orbit.

Charles Xavier’s thought echoed in the room like the whisper of a giant. _Yes,_ he answered the question that had only begun to form in Emma’s thoughts. _Humans, mutants, everyone. All the minds on Earth._

Staring at the constellations above and around her, Emma’s mouth hung open. _It’s beautiful,_ she thought in shock.

His gentle amusement washed over her in a deluge, and it was only through her diamond form and years of keeping her mind locked tight that she managed not to collapse in induced laughter.

 _Sorry,_ he said, calming himself. It made her think of a storm pulling back after it realized it was ruining a baseball game.

The map wheeled, presenting North America directly in front of Charles, then zoomed in so fast that Emma had to put a hand on the wall to keep the illusion of falling from becoming a reality. Then, when Manhattan was in the center, he pulled back a little, and she could see all of New England.

 _It’s something like fishing with nets,_ he murmured, as distant as if he were speaking from the moon. _Nets made to sift for one particular image, a memory, a feeling. Not one mind at a time, but like letting sand run through your fingers until the stone sticks between them...._

A pause, and a shift in the air like the drop of pressure before the weather changed, and then the world was spinning around them again. Closing her eyes didn’t help - the image lingered. They were hovering over (beneath?) Maryland now, Washington and Baltimore spilling toward each other like enormous anthills. _How interesting. Do you see?_

Breathing slowly to settle her nerves (and her stomach), Emma looked at the minds on the screen. They belonged to a town on a snaking inlet of the Chesapeake Bay. Most of the minds were hazy, or snapped in and out of focus, and flickered between activities like someone changing the television channel every few seconds - dreaming, Emma knew, though she’d never seen them quite like this - and it only strengthened her resolve not to make contact with a sleeping mind unless she absolutely had to.

Maybe a quarter of the town was awake. About half of those were hazy with weariness or booze, but the remainder were clear. Watching them, Emma did not see whatever Charles focused on, but after a moment it snapped together in her head.

“They think there’s another town across the inlet. In that dark space.”

 _Yes. Unusual, isn’t it?_ Charles turned the globe slowly around them as if rolling a ball in his hand, pitching Emma on her feet as if she were trying to keep her footing on the deck of a ship. _Hardly likely to be a delusion, and there is something very strange about that silence...._

She felt the weight of his mind, the feather-light touch of an enormous power as it pressed down on that emptiness. It seemed to ripple and spark in front of her, like lights deep in a riverbed.

 _How interesting._ It was no longer distant interest that animated Charles’s voice. Now it was something cold and dangerous, like the first icy snap of a blizzard. _How very interesting._

And then the world vanished, leaving them bathed in dim blue light as the hydraulics of the door began to hum. In the sudden absence of Charles’ power, Emma stumbled backwards into the corridor from the force of her own effort to withstand him. She pulled herself upright as the other telepath came down the walkway.

“Someone’s blocking a whole town somehow?” Emma asked him. Once you could block telepathy at all, it wasn’t too hard to believe someone could scale it up.

“Yes.” Charles’s eyes were unfocused, his hand still folded in his lap, and it took Emma a moment - she was still adjusting to seeing with her eyes again - to realize that his chair was moving on its own. “Perhaps some sort of broadcasted sonics. Disruptive patterns to render thoughts into white noise. Ingenious.”

“Dangerous.” Erika Lehnsherr Xavier, her arms folded and her expression coldly composed, waited for them in the corridor. “The smallest miscalibration could harm or kill an entire town of people. Our enemy is as careless with human life as Stryker is with our people’s. They and Weapon X are sharing technology.”

“You’re certain both kidnappings weren’t by the same group?” She wasn’t so sure Weapon X would care enough about the risks, if it got them what they wanted.

Charles blinked, looked up at Emma with a little less fog in his eyes. “Yes. Weapon X is under the impression that the jamming devices are small-scale only.”

“Besides which, they telepathically muzzled us so that our telepath could not find us. Why do this if they knew enough to find the Greys and capture them in a way that was obviously sufficient to overcome their powers? One of these operations was carried out by a group in full possession of the facts, and one was not.” Erika’s lips compressed into a grim line. “Stryker and his people are being played as pawns.”

Emma frowned. “Someone strong enough to use Weapon X and kidnap two of us. The mutants who attacked the Boston Center?”

“They seem a likely candidate,” Charles agreed into the middle distance. “I wonder who’s pulling their strings....”

“There is only one way to find out, _mein Geliebter._ ” Erika bent and kissed him lightly, her lips tracing his with the care of someone committing the act to memory, then turned to Emma with cold steel in her eyes. “Gather the X-men, Miss Frost. We are going hunting.”

Emma smiled icily. “With pleasure.”

* * *

“Peculiar.” Essex stopped working at his microscope and glanced over at the massive spool of paper whose variously colored inked needles had twice in the last hour wobbled in a way that reminded Jean of nothing so much as the standing in the seismological lab at Berkeley during her campus visit and watching the distant echoes of the Nicaragua quake echo through the North American plate. “You really would make a very valuable research assistant, Miss Grey, if I could depend on you.”

 _Hard to kidnap good help, I guess._ She didn’t feel any tremors - not that she necessarily would, strapped into her suspended pod thing - but something told her they weren’t seismographs. Anything she and Phoenix could learn about where they were might help them escape, but it didn’t mean she looked forward to the pontification. _I’m going to ask, sis. Sorry._ The lunatic loved the sound of his own voice. “What do they measure?”

He turned and gave her a long, penetrating look, then smiled. The expression made the skin at the small of her back try to crawl away. “I call it the psychograph,” he said, very much a professor taking a young student into his confidence. “It measures the electrical patterns which make up thoughts and emotions - those not directly controlled by the hormonal balance, at least - and are also the measurable signifier of telepathic contact.”

“I see,” she said mildly, thoughts racing. _It isn’t him and it isn’t us,_ Jean mused. “You didn’t expect it to pick up anything?” She suspected that Essex wasn’t the only telepath in his organization - and it had to be an organization, however small, because she didn’t think that one man, however powerful or prepared, could take them and Scott prisoner. So it could be one of his people.

Or.

“The green, red, gold and black patterns are within normal parameters.” He gestured to the roll, then walked over to it and unspooled a section of the paper - spilling it around his pale hands in the process - to study more closely. “The ripple in the blues, however, is not. I haven’t seen that particular pattern in quite some time.”

Shifting her weight in the web of straps, Jean tried to get a closer look. Of course, she wouldn’t know what anything meant without understanding more about the machine. “Do the patterns differ by people, or thought patterns, or something else?”

“Frequency, intensity, bandwidth, modulation. All have to be accounted for. But individual telepaths do have their signatures, if you know what to look for....” Essex’s fingernails scraped lightly on the paper as he ran his hand over it.

 _Emma. Mister Xavier._ Hope sped their heart in their chest, even as Jean worried that Essex seemed familiar with whoever it was.

“This is extremely inopportune. I haven’t time for this sort of distraction.” Adjusting the spools to retract the paper, Essex checked a set of gauges and then adjusted three dials - all of them upward. “I may have to take steps to accelerate our progress.” A flick of a switch finished his work with the panel, and then he started for the array of drugs and needles. Somewhere off in the distance, Jean thought she could hear a siren.

“Do you normally find yourself particularly vulnerable to nausea while menstruating?” Essex asked, as if he was trying to be a friendly family physician and not a mad eugenicist. Jean felt some current nausea at the reminder of what he wanted her for.

“Only since we started the Pill,” Phoenix cut in, and Jean felt their mouth curl in a vicious smirk. “And only in the morning.”  

Essex turned and narrowed his eyes at them in a way that was probably meant to suggest parental disapproval. The actual effect would have been more at home in a production of _Faust_. “It really is unfortunate what they allow young women pharmacological access to these days. Accelerating your cycle would be much less uncomfortable without that particular set of interactions. Still, we shall have to make do.”

Chills up her spine quieted her stomach, at least. “Uncomfortable?” She didn’t want to know. The X-Men were going to burst into the stupid lab any minute now and it wouldn’t matter.

“I am afraid,” Essex said as he tapped the air from the syringe in his hand and then started preparing an IV drip, “that this may be somewhat painful.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Queen Anne County, Maryland -  5:01 am - November 4, 1973**

Lorna sat up with a faint, pained grunt.  

“God. Too early.”

From his side of the bed, Alex looked up at her and shared the wince, caught her hand. Held it. “Looks like you still haven’t slept off all the flying you did last night.”

Grimacing, she nodded. “Tell me about it. But duty must.”

Before she could force herself out of bed, Alex pulled her gently back down to him. “Let me take your shift. You should rest.”

Lorna opened her mouth to object on principle, then thumped her face back down into her pillow and wrapped a slim hand around his. Squeezed. Mumbled something that was probably grateful before the pillow and the green mass of her hair smothered it.

By the time he’d dragged his uniform on, Lorna was asleep again. He paused to kiss her forehead before descending the well-worn stairs to the rest of the house. Most of the rooms were closed - it was too big for two people - but the kitchen and small living room were cozily furnished. Alex barely noticed them as he went out into the dark chill of the pre-dawn morning.

Father had bought the land decades ago, building the domed underground base over a period of years long before Alex lived there. While Father tended to sleep in a small suite just off the main lab, and there were certainly enough apartments to house all the Marauders if need arose, Alex and Lorna preferred the old colonial house left on the property from earlier owners.

Call him old-fashioned, but Alex just liked being able to see the sun. And he did not like being within throwing distance of Chimera, with or without psychic jamming

Across the field to the barn. Down the hidden elevator. When the doors opened to the metal-lined corridors of the base, a huge, grayish-white shape blocked Alex’s exit.

“Hey, Cal.”

Hunched so low that its hands scraped the ground, it tilted its head to the side inquisitively.

“She doesn’t feel well. I took her shift.”

The head tilted to the other side, then nodded, and Caliban lumbered down the hallway to his own R&R.

Alex waited five minutes, then locked the elevator manually, and walked the quarter mile of sloping corridors down to the auxiliary lab. Stopped at the doorway to manually disable the internal alarms, cameras and security measures, then let himself in.

The room was small, maybe two meters across and four deep, a rectangular slice of a large dome. A tangle of electrical cables, meter boxes, and other odds and ends filled the shelves running the length of one wall. Father used the lab for electrical experiments or testing equipment with a high power draw. At the moment, the thick cords traveling through the walls to the generators and the rest of the base were connected to a massive array of brass piping and ferrous-alloy curves that formed two broad, open-framed shells suitable for holding a prisoner at a subtle reverse incline, wrapping around the prisoner’s head like a crown.

The man in the middle of it all couldn’t really move his head, of course, but Alex saw him tense when the door opened. Good.

Locking the door behind him, Alex strolled forward at his own pace, watching his brother get more and more wound up. It was easier than it used to be.

“Good morning, Scott,” Alex said cheerily. “Sleep well?”

“You know how it is,” Scott rasped. IVs kept him hydrated, but that didn’t do much for a dry throat. “Just hanging around.”

There was a cabinet or console of some kind next to the device, and Alex sauntered forward to lean on it, smiling.

“How’s it feel, Scott? I gotta say I’m really enjoying having the upper hand lately.” He’d had a long time to think about this moment: making Scott know Alex had beaten him. “Though last night was really easy. Guess you were distracted, but still. Boston was more satisfying.”

Scott’s wrists shifted against the straps holding him in place, but his hands didn’t clench. Still in the earlier stages of angry. That was fine with Alex. Cranking up the dial was all part of the fun. “You like losing that much, let me out of here and we can go another round.”

“Some other time,” Alex shrugged, even if the gesture was wasted. “Doesn’t it bug you? How easy it was to drop you and your weird girlfriend? You didn’t even have time for a moral dilemma.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that you’re working for a guy who thinks I’m going to father the Mutant Messiah? Because personally, that would make me wonder if maybe he needed professional help.”

“Shut up!” Alex’s amusement was gone. “What the fuck do you know about it? You left. Blew a hole in the wall and fucking ran.” His face was hot with rage, the careful plans he’d made about slowly revealing his identity to Scott evaporated.

Scott’s stillness was so complete that it stood out, even in the straps. Even bound so tight he couldn’t move his head a fraction. “Alex?”

“Took you long enough.” The room felt too crowded, then, all the equipment and cables  threatening to collapse in on the churning in Alex’s chest. “Miss me?”

“Jesus, yes.” The way Scott’s voice broke was all wrong - not hurt or angry or apologetic, but this terrible clinging _relief_ that seemed like it was trying to worm its way inside Alex’s skin. “I thought... God, Alex, I looked everywhere for you. The Professor, she practically turned the orphanage records of twenty states inside out. I thought you were buried away in some Weapon X lab or worse.”

Alex’s hands balled into fists, rage smashing against years of hurt, an incoherent storm in him. “You didn’t look here,” he found himself saying. “You moved in with them and never left New York.” His voice didn’t sound at all sure, and he hated it.

“Alex,” Scott said, his voice still shaking like he couldn’t believe who he was talking to, “Alex, if I had known where you were, I would have knocked down every hill from here to Jersey finding you. What are you _doing_ with these people?”

The conviction in his brother’s voice cut through all the emotion swamping Alex and bit deep. He shook his head, willing the world to go back to the way it had been five minutes before. “Making a place in the world for ourselves. That’s what you think you’re doing too, right? But we know humans will never be our friends, and you’re fooling yourselves.”

“How do you do that?” Scott breathed, and now there was anger in his voice again. “How do you draw a bright red line in your head and put ‘mutant’ on one side and ‘human’ on the other, like everyone’s the same just because they have the X-factor or don’t? I went to school with humans I wouldn’t trust with a dime and humans who were better people than me, and I’ve met mutants worth dying for and mutants who aren’t worth the shine on my girl’s shoes. ‘People fear each other because they don’t know each other,’ Alex - Doctor King said that just a few years ago. We get people talking to each other, get them to know each other, and eventually they figure out we’re all just people - human, mutant, whatever. How did you get so twisted around you can lump everybody who isn’t a mutant into one big box and say they’ll never be your friend or your neighbors or someone you’d let your kids take to the movies?”

This was better. Something he could fight. Alex snorted in derision. “Because when humans hurt mutants, it’s the mutants who get locked up. Because Weapon X exists. Because we all have dead friends and we’re sick and fucking tired of hiding and hoping the flatscans will like us. Aren’t you?”

Scott’s mouth twitched, and then he was actually _smiling_ and it pissed Alex off so badly that he hand to clamp his hands together to keep from blowing off sparks around the high-powered electrical machinery. “You’ve got your head rammed so far up your ass so many different ways that I could spend a week sorting you out. Weapon X has to go, no argument from me, but fighting them by blowing up buildings is like cutting chunks off yourself to fight cancer. Sure, sometimes you have to do it, but it’s not going to make you better in the long run. You have to kill the cancer at the root. You’re sick of hiding? Good. That’s good. The closet or a hole in the ground lab somewhere, it doesn’t help any of us. You kidnapped me off a public street, remember? We aren’t hiding, Alex, we’re building - every time we talk to somebody, every time a Center goes up or some community meeting happens somewhere, we replace a little more cancer with something healthy. That’s hope, not sitting around on your ass trying to breed the _ubermensch_. Don’t you hear yourself?”

It was low, dirty and kind of pathetic of him, but Alex didn’t care at the moment. He punched Scott in the stomach just to wipe the high-and-mighty smirk off his face.

“Take your hope and fuck yourself,” Alex growled. “Or stay deluded, see what I care. Either way you’re stuck here, charging our batteries for us until it’s time to fuck your girlfriend.”

Stillness again, and the ragged unsteadiness of Scott’s breathing. God, that was satisfying.

Then Scott started to laugh.

“Shut up,” Alex hissed. It only made Scott laugh harder. “What’s so fucking funny?”

“I was just thinking,” Scott chuckled as the arrays of piping started to shiver and shake like they were rattling apart from the inside, “that you need my Applied Sciences course even worse than you need my other girlfriend’s ethics course, Alex.”

He had a really bad feeling about this.

Now the indicator needles were topped out, and the machine was humming in a different harmonic than before, higher-pitched. “What did you do, Scott?” he demanded, looking the machine over, trying to decide if he should pull the plug or not.

It took him maybe longer than it should have to realise that the ‘plug’ was his brother, because he was still trying to make sense of the dials when pipes started bursting over his head and the lights in the room guttered and died. For two, maybe three seconds, the room was totally dark.

Then the faint red glow that his eyes were only starting to adjust enough to see was more like a bomb going off from every surface of the room, rattling metal across metal and smashing the machinery into useless debris, bruising him even through the armored fabric of his uniform. By the time he blasted enough of it out of the way to stand up, Scott was standing on top of the wreck with his eyes closed and delicate tracers of crimson light spilling from under the edges of his lids.

“Basic physics, little brother, and a little mechanical engineering. Motion creates friction, friction creates heat, heat changes water to a gas to run turbines - more heat means more gas, the turbines spin faster, you get more power. But if you add enough motion, enough force, you’ll either exceed the structural strength of the materials or force a phase state change from gas to plasma.” The blast of energy from Alex’s hand that ripped most of the machinery away on either side of Scott just vanished into the air around him like water into a sponge, and Scott’s smile stayed undented. “You going to come quietly, or do we have to have that rematch?”


	19. Chapter 19

**Eastern Seaboard Airspace -  5:20 am - November 4, 1973**

“Grab a chair, Emma,” Tempo said, voice carrying hard and flat from the cockpit, keeping her eyes on the sky and the controls. “You aren’t helping morale.”

Emma stopped pacing the length of the Blackbird, nodded, and took her seat. Magneto was a statue of calm, of course, but Johanna and John both relaxed perceptibly, and Heather’s shoulders loosened a fraction. For their sakes as much as her own, she schooled herself to stillness, no small task when she was bursting with the need to act, to move, to do _something_.

It wouldn’t help them get to Scott and Phoenix and Jean any faster, of course. She knew that. But convincing the snarling, coiled rage in her chest of that fact was proving nearly impossible, and all she could do was contain it. The diamond sheen between her and the world was the only thing giving her even that much control.

“It is hard, _nicht?_ The waiting.” Kurt’s whisper grated the air beside her as he twisted up over the back of the chair next to hers and settled there, broad-fingered hands flexing visibly inside his gauntlets while his tail uncurled from the overhead grips. “I am only reassured that the people we mean to find, their time is passing more unpleasantly.”

Emma’s lips turned up in a grim half-smile. “I wouldn’t want to be them, no,” she agreed.

“I think perhaps that the Greys, they are the tiger.” He caught the rise of her glittering eyebrow and gestured with both hands in the way he often did when trying to make himself more clear. “The tiger caught by the tail in the old story, _ja?_ ”

“ _Ja,_ ” she smiled. “Though I think their kidnappers will prefer a real tiger before the end of the day.”

Kurt’s smile showed exceptionally sharp white teeth.

“Two minutes,” Heather called over the intercom. What she muttered under her breath barely carried over the vibration of the engines through the frame. “Would’ve been a lot quicker if I wasn’t worried about breaking windows all up and down the Atlantic seaboard....”

Magneto’s restraint harness unhooked itself, and the rich metallic fabric of her cloak swayed as she stood and braced herself against the metal bulkhead behind the cockpit with one hand. “Code names only from this point forward,” she said, her voice an echo of thunder through the distortion built into her helmet. “This is no different from what we have trained for. Trust that training. Master your anger and your fear - use them like any other weapon. Whoever our enemies are, they are not prepared for us, whatever they believe. Minimize collateral damage where you can, but today the mission comes first - we do not stop until we have taken our enemies out of play and retrieved our comrades.”

The banked rage in the plane hummed like a live thing with fangs and claws, loud enough that Emma could feel it over her own. The X-men would have accepted no other orders.

The expressionless slit of Magneto’s helmet shifted, throwing the weight of her gaze further back in the compartment. “Frenzy. Your first priority is to save lives, not to end them. Remember that.”

Joanna Cargill’s emotions, even through her shielding, glowed like the armor of a knight receiving her accolade. “Ma’am.”

A vibrating, breath-caught silence held for another handful of heartbeats.

Heather’s voice again - Tempo’s, Emma reminded herself - over the intercom. “Sixty seconds. I’m going to put us two miles out from Chestertown, off to the side of the highway junction - no cloud cover in sight, so no point trying to hide, but maybe nobody will look up. It’s a beautiful day to go to war.”

Thunderbird and Frenzy both laughed - tight, edgy, full of tension. Nightcrawler only brushed a hand over the hilt of one of his swords.

The cold rage in Emma’s chest blossomed into a smile as she unstrapped herself.

“Green light,” Tempo said as the pitch of the engines changed and the passenger bay doors slid open with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Bright twilight spilled in, the glow of a morning minutes from sunrise.  “Everybody out.”

There was nothing quite so unnatural about being an X-man as stepping out of an airplane over a five hundred meter drop wearing nothing but one’s armor and trusting to something invisible (if not intangible) to slow the fall. Not that she was entirely certain she needed it, but the precise implications of a terminal velocity fall for her diamond body weren’t something she had a sane desire to test.

Even if part of her wanted to be on the ground at this moment badly enough to resent the subtle pressure of her armor against her, slowing her so that the grassy earth Magneto had chosen as their point of landing only compacted subtly when she struck it.

By then, there were other things on - in - her mind, like the subtle, humming pressure that cut her off from the others and stripped their carefully shielded feelings away from her almost as soon as they stepped out of the plane. It was the same silence that the White Queen had heard in Cerebro. At the center would be the source of the telepathic shroud, and she was prepared to destroy whatever - or whoever - it was.

“I take it,” Magneto said as she settled to a drifting hover a meter or so above the earth, Tempo touching down beside her, “that the scrambler is now affecting us, White Queen?”

“Yes. Stronger here than in the air.” She had the peculiar feeling that if she’d been capable of experiencing pain through the diamond of her body, her back teeth would have ached. Even the suggestion of it was irritating.

“And just when I was starting to get used to... ow!” Thunderbird winced and rubbed his shoulder, throwing Frenzy a look. “You didn’t even know what I was going to say!”

“Shut it,” the dark-skinned girl bit off, calm as a soldier now, eyes watching everything. “Boss?”

Magneto’s gauntleted hands shifted slowly, tracing the air like divining rods, and then she laughed - a hard, cool sound without humor or mercy. “No innocent farm needs so much power or so much metal. A quarter mile to our south and a fraction west.” Her hand rose, the gesture perhaps a bit theatrical but no less authoritative for it. “They will have seen us. Move in.”

Frenzy and Thunderbird could manage the acceleration of a Shelby Mustang when they wanted to, and the smoky flicker of Nightcrawler’s advance through the trees was even faster than that. Tempo, for her part, simply vanished.

Emma, even at a flat run, could only manage a fifth of John or Johanna’s speed. But she’d arrive in the same pristine, unbreathing, unfatigued condition she always enjoyed when she was diamond, and she needed to cover less than a mile. Magneto, for her part, kept the same sprinting pace without ever touching the ground. Tactical considerations, Emma decided, because if it was any form of morale-boosting exercise she would be honor-bound to try to beat the older woman unconscious with a lamp post.

There was a small cluster of buildings on the green - two colonial houses, a barn, a greenhouse. She started running towards them - cover was better than lacking it, training told her. Frenzy and Thunderbird overhauled her, sweeping the exterior of the barn on both sides and then signaling the space clear with their hands. Nightcrawler appeared outside the door of the barn a moment later, signalling the same for the interior. By the time they regrouped - along the back wall of the barn, which was a painfully placid red that looked like it belonged in a Rockwell painting - Frenzy and Thunderbird were starting to look restless.

“Kinda boring for an enemy stronghold,” Thunderbird shook his head in disappointment. “No barbed wire? No fence? No booby traps? Not even any guards? Lame.”

Tempo flickered in and out, coming to rest just past the barn’s corner, her helmet still subtly out of focus as if she were looking around too fast to follow.

“Get down!” The time-manipulator’s shout preceded the tractor that crashed through the wall by less than a second, ripping through the barn in a hail of wood and metal fragments as potentially lethal as a half-dozen grenades. It tumbled like a pinwheel for another dozen yards before wrapping what was left of itself around a tree, the wood cracking with a sound like an enormous branch snapping underfoot. The air stank of sulfur.

From their position on the ground, the White Queen saw Frenzy smack Thunderbird in the shoulder again, careless of the wood and metal that barely scraped their skins. “You fucking had to say something,” she growled.

Metal moaned, and when Emma pushed herself up onto one knee she caught a glimpse of green hair and a purple cloak through the cracked far wall of the barn before a swarm of rusted metal - pitchforks, saw blades, hammers, scythes, what had probably been spare parts for a mechanical thresher once - lifted itself in the air and crashed through the battered wood siding like a volley of missiles and a panel of metal siding swung up like a shield to block them.

“I have this one.” Magneto’s voice rasped with the shadow of effort. “There will be more. Find them.”

Frenzy and Thunderbird broke right around the edge of the barn, leaving the left for Emma and Tempo - wherever she’d taken herself off to - and the unexpected privacy cost more in frayed nerves than it saved her in dignity while she scrambled to her feet and ran out into the narrow gravel road that curved in front of the four buildings that were looking less pastoral by the moment. The barn groaned as a heavy shovel whipped out through the front door and drove itself into a tree, and Emma ducked away from the flying wood and iron reflexively before training reminded her that it wouldn’t hurt her.

The quaint little colonial guest house developed a sudden and ominous lean as something heavy crashed through both sides of it and came tumbling to rest a few feet from her in a tangle of plaster, bits of wooden frame and shattered dishes.

“Motherfucker,” Frenzy growled as she shoved out from under the mess and spat blood from a split lip. “That’s my fucking boyfriend you’re trying to beat down!”

She didn’t bother to go around the house passing back through, and Emma heard a distant clang that reminded her of curved metal - maybe a sink? - hitting something hard.

The Xavier’s ability to keep their house in one piece was suddenly much more impressive.

Through the hole in the wall, Emma saw a young woman in jeans and a peasant blouse gingerly descend the stairs, frowning at the destruction. She left the building through the door, closing it carefully behind her despite the gaping hole not three feet away, and glared at Emma. The sun glinted off her painfully obvious auburn dye job, and a graceful hand pointed accusingly at the White Queen.

“You put a hole in my house! I just got the front room the way I liked it, too. Now I’m going to have to make jewelry out of you to make myself feel better.” A green mist began to congeal around the girl’s arms, and Emma recognized her from the fragmented memories she’d picked up in the Boston Center.

The psychotic, telekinetic little twit was going to try to kill her. That was simply unacceptable - not very surprising, granted, but still unacceptable. She picked up a broken stud from the pile Frenzy had left and threw it like a spear, just to keep the girl busy, and then rushed her. Telekinesis ran on concentration, and it was probably difficult to concentrate with a few broken bones in one’s arm.

A reptilian green head - _Dragons? Really?_ \- shot out of the mist and wrapped itself around her arm, dragging ruts in the grassy front lawn where her feet slid, and she caught a flash of purple light in the corner of her eye a moment before black smoke and sulfur bloomed around her. Sharp metal rang off something hard to her left, and a woman choked out a sound that suggested a hand - or perhaps the hilt of a sword - had found its way under her ribs and knocked the air out of her.

“Excuse us, _Fräulein._ ” Another rush of air and a fresh well of black smoke, and then she was alone in the smoke with the glowing green dragon breaking its translucent teeth on her arm

The redhead’s eyes widened gratifyingly when she dragged herself and the trailing telekinetic projection out into clearer air. “Shit.”

Emma smiled, and then ducked a second dragon which seemed intent on head-butting her. Fear apparently interfered with the visual logic of the girl’s psychic projections. Not, unfortunately, their leverage - she had to dig her heels into the ground to keep from scraping her way across the grass again.

“Where are they?” she demanded, pushing forward despite the girl’s force. “You can keep your secrets or the use of all your fingers, but not both.”

A knife of concentrated thought punched through the static in the back of her brain and scraped along her mental shields. The girl’s breathing spiked another notch toward panic.

The crest of the low hill a few hundred meters west of the main house threw itself skyward in a detonation that turned the greenhouse into a shower of flying glass and knocked Emma and the telekinetic both sprawling. Dirt and stone smashed down like sleet and hail, filling the air with wind-swirled dust that would have been choking if Emma had needed to breathe, and for a moment she was alone in something very like a sandstorm.

Then another shockwave flattened the sediment out of the air as if the breath of God had chased it away, snapping trees like twigs and sending the battered barn to the ground in a heap of broken wood and metal sheeting, and Emma could see again. A hundred meters over the new crater that sat where the wooded hill once had, a white-hot pillar of fire mocked the sun creeping over the horizon.

An orange shadow in the center of it had the vague shape of a person, and in its movement and the peculiar heat against her mind Emma recognized who it must be. Her jaw hung unapologetically open, knowing that she had never seen and might never again witness such power, even as she worried that Phoenix and Jean were burning themselves to a crisp.

That her mind was free of the numbing pressure which had smothered it since the Blackbird’s doors opened came as barely an afterthought - the towering, incandescent rage that was literally igniting the air around the Greys washed over her like a flood and left her gasping for breath, barely aware of her own glittering hands through the dust clinging to them or the vibrations that shuddered through the ground beneath her like tiny earthquakes.

In the back of her mind, a tumble of words from some secret box she hadn’t touched since she was a child came pouring free. _O God, merciful and compassionate, who art ever ready to hear the prayers of those who put their trust in thee; graciously hearken to us who call upon thee, and grant us thy help in this our need...._

* * *

“When we get out of here,” Phoenix rasped around the straw she was sipping water through, “you are going to die horribly. I promise you.”

Essex sighed and squeezed the bag of water carefully, pushing a little more into their mouth. “Perhaps I could convince you to rinse your mouth now and threaten me later, young lady?”

Jean really appreciated how much of the water Phoenix managed to spit back in his face in one shot. Essex, visibly trying to retain some semblance of dignity, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and set about tidying himself up.

“You really are the most tiresome patient I’ve had in years,” he finally said, maintaining a respectful distance for the moment. “I only have so many changes of clothes readily available.”

“And I’m running out of bodily fluids. Truce?”

Jean didn’t know how or when or, dear God, why Phoenix had learned to vomit on command, but disgusting as it was, it had been worth it as revenge for the drugs that had felt like a five degree fever, a massive hangover and their period all at the same time. Ditto for holding their bladder until Essex was within range.

“I realize that you may think your puerile, adolescent humor is amusing, but I do not. Hopefully it doesn’t represent a genetic predisposition.”

“It represents,” Jean gritted, “the fact that we will do absolutely anything to hurt or inconvenience you.”

“Ah, the more refined and scientifically enlightened Miss Grey. Your alter-ego is exceedingly tiresome. With you, at least, defiance has the feeling of principle and some semblance of dignity.” Essex carefully washed his hands, then extracted a vial of her blood from the centrifuge and prepared three new slides for his microscopes. “I must confess that it will be a considerable relief once I no longer have to tolerate her presence. Surely you feel the same?”

She knew their heart didn’t really stop, but it felt like it. Any of the more intelligent things she could have said didn’t make it past the panic. “What? You can’t.”

“Not at the moment, no. The conditioning and psychic surgery required to excise her and make you a more suitable assistant would be exceedingly stressful - quite unacceptable in the consequences for fertility and the chances of a successful pregnancy. I’m afraid it will have to wait until after.” Essex adjusted his slides and then checked them, voice almost apologetic. “I do wish I’d been able to acquire you sooner and take care of it before you reached fertility, but I’m afraid I allowed myself to be confident you would not manifest your gifts until closer to puberty. An oversight on my part.”

 _He likes to talk._ Phoenix’s mind-voice was a wraith of fury and smoke, but held with a control that Jean hadn’t been sure her sister possessed. _Keep him talking. We can’t threaten to murder him any more than we already have._

Eyes stinging with even the possibility of being cut apart from her other self, Jean took a deep breath. He seemed to like answering her questions.  “You knew about me before? How?”

“I’ve been monitoring your family line for several generations - extremely promising.” His eyes still on the slides, Essex’s voice had a distracted quality to it that suggested he wasn’t entirely conscious of his phrasing. “Very little adjustment required. You were the most probable member of my selection group for this generation. Not like the Summers family - they were quite the surprise. Advanced my timetable twenty years. Fortunately, you were even more remarkable than I expected. A perfect genetic match. Extremely serendipitous - I thought I would need a much longer breeding program.”

The feel of Phoenix at her back helped Jean muscle through her revulsion. “But you did make some adjustments? To my family?” _God, if he tells us that he made sure Grammie met Gramps...._

“Oh, yes. Your maternal great-grandmother was set on marrying the most unsuitable man. He had to be removed and a better candidate substituted - his variations on the long arm of chromosome nineteen could have entirely ruined the line.” Essex removed the slides, filing them carefully, then began paging through one of the books on his side table with brisk care.

“Of course.” _Jesus._ “How did you know all that? Have you been stealing hair or something from people who look interesting?” _And our great-grandmother? Just how old is this nutjob?_

“Blood is most efficient. Besides, once you have a complete genetic map of the relevant lines and the computing power necessary to process it - a considerable task, I assure you - it’s only necessary to check now and then for the possibility of environmental variation.” He turned away from the book and smiled in what he probably thought was a benevolent way.

It made him look like a complete madman.

 _If he’s talking about breeding people for mutation, at least a hundred years. Probably more._ Even through the hot smoke of her rage, Phoenix could muster an internal shrug and a smile at Jean’s surprise. _You thought you were the only one paying attention when you were reading about Watson and Crick?_

Mentally, Jean crooked a shaken smile. _I guess John must have been sick that day._

_Field trip. It was a long weekend._

“I realize, of course, that you’re still planning to try to escape,” Essex continued, the earnestness more frightening than mad laughter would have been, “but it is important that you realize that you are the culmination of not only millions of years of natural selection but also the careful labor of my life’s work to accelerate that process. The child you will bring into the world will be as much a step beyond _homo sapiens superior_ as we are above _homo sapiens sapiens_. Perhaps more.”

“And then what?” Jean made a futile half-gesture of her hands. “What grand destiny are you planning for my baby?”

“Design?” He stared at her as if she were speaking in tongues. “Why, what he - or less probably, she - pleases. I will continue my studies, of course, but once he is mature, evolution will take its proper course.”

Jean took a moment to absorb this. _Wow. Not just unfeeling monster crazy, but also monumental effort for a stupid goal crazy. This gets better by the minute._ “You said earlier that Scott and I would have had a baby anyway,” she said. “Why bother with all this, if you knew it would happen and you don’t care what the kid does besides survive?”

“The two of you might have failed to conceive. Conceived improperly. One of you could have died!” Essex’s expression was one of such aghast horror that it probably would have been comical if he wasn’t the lunatic kidnapper planning to use her for breeding stock. “Think of the lost opportunities! Not to mention the mistakes you might have made raising the child, not knowing his genetic destiny!”

She shouldn’t have been surprised that he wanted to raise the child, too. God. “So, anything he _or she_ wants, except live with us in peace. And what ‘mistakes’? Do you have some kind of mutant training program for toddlers?”

“I have some modest proposals along those lines,” he said, visibly calming. “A few more years of refinement would have been useful, but I think what crude structures I’ve been able to put in place will suffice.” A fractional pause, and then his eyes narrowed. “Please excuse me, Miss Grey, but time is pressing. We’ve only a few more hours before you’ll be ready to begin your session with Mister Summers, and the precise hormonal mixtures do require some further adjustment. As diverting as I find our conversation....”

The lights flickered for a moment, and he turned his head to stare at them. “Equipment malfunction at a time like this,” he said, as if expecting the sternness of his tone to cow them into proper function, “is completely unacceptable.”

A dozen lights burst and the room went completely dark. Equipment crackled, spilling the acrid taste of burning circuits into the air. Essex hissed in frustration, but that didn’t matter.

Jean could feel the room with her mind.

“You are so completely fucked,” Phoenix said.

 _Together,_ Jean said/thought, wrapping her fingers around her sister’s.

_Together._

He reached for them, of course - tried to drive his mind into them like a spike, pin them open and pry into them like he’d done with Scott before he took Scott away, but Jean was ready for him. The bright, protective defiance that said she would _never_ let her sister be taken away from her was a shield, and the searing certainty that this lunatic was never going to come _near_ any child she might or might not ENTIRELY OF HER OWN CHOICE have was a sword of fire. She drove him back out of their head, cut at him, made him flinch in pain and try to burrow behind his walls of static.

The restraints sheared away from their skin, shredding themselves into molecular fragments. Somewhere across the room, the coffin-bed crunched flat as paper against a wall. The air started to whirl and dance with sparks.

Nathaniel Essex cried out in something that might have been terror or ecstasy.

 _I want the sky._ Her thought, Phoenix’s thought, their thought. It didn’t matter.

The hundreds of tons of rock and dirt and metal above them were dust on a gale.


	20. Chapter 20

Though Charles sat alone below his house, thousands upon thousands of minds hummed alongside his own, a tantalising galaxy of consciousness beckoning to him. It was only years of hard-earned discipline that kept him from reaching out to them. As difficult as not connecting to an available mind had been for him as a young man, it was exponentially harder to simply listen while his power was amplified. Like a Buddhist monk, he practiced slow breathing and the art of letting all thoughts flow through him without disturbing his serenity. So far, so good.

The first time Hank and Erika had shown him the blueprints for their wondrous psychic amplification array, he had been positively transported with delight. Surely no better tool could be imagined for seeking out mutants in distress or who might need training, for keeping watch over the whole of mutant and humankind like an omnipresent guardian. The rapture had lasted until the first time they tested it, there in the cold quiet under the Mansion.

Now, more often than not, he tried to forget it even existed.

Keeping watch with Cerebro was a bit like being a Strategic Air Command pilot with a nuclear payload - he might not do anything at all, or he might rain down destruction with world-shattering force. He hoped to God he would be completely superfluous today, but every moment of silent absence that passed with the X-men lost behind that shield of silence coiled fresh layers of dread through his chest.

Then, as sudden as breath pushed away by a blow, there were more than four thousand new minds glittering around him. Impressions poured in like a waterfall - cracked glass and panic in the center of Chestertown, a plume of shattered earth cast up into the sky and out over the landscape like a mushroom cloud blown apart from the heart, Joanna Cargill spitting blood and grit out of her mouth as she hauled herself to her feet with the enormous bald bastard who’d cracked one of John’s ribs and left her with bruises murderously fixed in the front of her mind, Kurt’s mind sluggishly dredging the identity of the dust-smeared violet-haired woman gasping on the ground beside him from the mess in his head. Scott’s eyes blazing with shattering red light and a pale-haired boy wreathed in blue-white plasma, their knuckles bloody, metal and stone ripping apart around them everywhere their light touched. Emma Frost, thoughts a babble of awe and prayer while she stared up at a whirlwind of flame in the sky.

Not just fire - it was a storm of air and heat, yes, but the rage burned more fiercely than any mere flame. It was remarkable how it didn’t engulf but only honed her sharp intelligence - perhaps almost as incredible as the fact that it was, at the moment, one mind - neither Phoenix nor Jean but the synthesis of them both. Charles wished he could somehow capture the feel of that mind, the shape of it, remember what it had looked like when Miss Grey was one with herself.

He was also terrified that she was going to destroy herself, or others. How many had been caught in the blast when she destroyed the hill?

 _Charles Xavier._ A red-eyed shadow interrupted, unfolding into his mindscape, incongruously seated in a comfortable arm chair with a cane across one knee in the midst of the debris rolling across the Maryland grass. _Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s impolite to pry?_

 _Impolite?_   The frustrated rage he’d been carrying in his chest for hours pounded through his veins. _You abducted my children,_ he hissed, and struck. It was only a fraction of his strength, a blow meant to hurt but not damage. Not yet.

The shadow flickered aside as if it had not moved, as if his blow were spent against empty air. A thousand and more human minds sparked with an echo of pain and fresh fear.

 _Sentiment is so unbecoming in a scientist,_ the shadow hissed. _As are childish tantrums. I’ve been experimenting with telepathy since before you were born, boy. Do you really think your admittedly interesting toy is going to let you squash me like a bug?_ A pause, and then a sigh. _Excuse me. The mother of our future evolutionary advancement is attempting to kill me again._

It was Heather’s eyes, this time, that showed him the battered man in what had probably been a fashionable suit before it was burned and ripped and dust-spattered being lifted into the air by an invisible hand and smashed down against the hard-packed ground, then hauled up like a broken puppet and hurled back to earth again, mending each time more swiftly than Prometheus lashed to his rock. Then a blur of bared teeth and pale skin lunged toward her, and her consciousness began skipping through time like a stone too swift to touch.

 _This,_ the shadow said in pungent exasperation, _is really becoming quite tiresome._

Mouth twisted in disgust, Charles lashed out again towards the madman - Nathaniel Essex, he was able to learn, as well as a smattering of recent memories that only strengthened his hatred of the man - to little effect. It was as if he had thrust a rapier into smoke.

Shouting in frustration, he pulled his attention back to the burning woman who was busy smashing her abductor. _Dear one,_ he called to her, laying a gentle touch on the surface of her mind, _you must calm down if we are to find how to defeat him._

 _NO!_ she screamed, filling him with white heat, and there was a shower of sparks, a crushing weight on his chest, darkness and silence.

No, not silence. Minds around him still, but at their usual volume.

After a long, painful moment he was able to draw breath, and discovered that he was lying sprawled out across the hallway outside the Cerebro chamber, his wheelchair half-folded on top of him. The helmet still sat on his head - it had helped cushion the impact, thankfully. The wires trailing from it still glowed where they’d burned through, emitting an acrid smoke that matched the stench drifting out into the hallway from the console. A flickering light from the center of the room confirmed his suspicion that parts of the machinery were actually on fire, and a rudimentary knowledge of physics told him that if the misfiring circuits hadn’t tripped the emergency release of the door hydraulics, he would probably have broken bones or a smashed skull instead of an impressive collection of bruises and a ringing headache.

“Well done, Xavier,” he muttered to himself. “First rate.”

* * *

 Scott’s heart was pounding against his ribs with effort when he hauled himself to his feet for the fifth time and risked cracking his lids, ripping a yards-deep gash in the wall of the laboratory that currently resembled an amphitheater of debris with a raggedly carved skylight. Given the tattered state of his brother’s ‘uniform’ and the impressive collection of bruises the younger Summers was sporting to go with his furious scowl, the kid couldn’t be feeling much better than he was.

“Are we done yet?” Scott’s voice sounded raspy and dust-choked, even to him. Not exactly intimidating. Well, you worked with the tools you had.

“Like hell,” Alex grunted, and he was slow (and loud) enough in the shift of his weight that Scott was able to turn most of the force of his punch away with a hand on the inside of his brother’s wrist. Fighting blind wasn’t exactly easy, but the intuitive sense of spatial awareness that made him a natural pilot and an unnaturally good pool sharp helped and the unstable footing and the mix of broken ceramic plating, dirt and gravel underfoot made it simpler than the smooth practice rooms he’d learned it in. He kept contact the way he’d been trained to, trying for a foot sweep, but Alex managed to jump over it and mostly keep his footing when he came down. His little brother’s teachers hadn’t been bad, either.

But they hadn’t been good enough to teach him that using the same counter to the same sweep three times in the same fight was predictable, and predictable reflexes were a good way to get your ass kicked. His elbow connected with the back of Alex’s head while the kid was still finding his balance, and his left hand came down flat on the small of Alex’s back to keep track of him while his right rapped the back of Alex’s head to make sure he went out and stayed out. A concussion and a possible broken nose weren’t fun, but they beat dying.

In the silence after, he could hear a distant roar like a storm and the trickle of broken gravel mixed with his brother’s ragged breathing. Steady pulse. No choking.

“If I’d known you were going to be this much of a pain in the ass,” he whispered while he got his arms under Alex’s and pulled him up over his own shoulders, “I’d have stolen fewer oranges for you when we were kids.”

He turned in place slowly, consulting his mental map of the room, and picked the direction least likely to bring the whole unstable ruin of the base down on his head. Adjusted the angle of his neck slightly, shifting Alex on his shoulders to make sure his brother’s hip was out of the way, and then opened his eyes.

The world blazed red around him as he watched the broken wall of the pit pounded away under the concussive pressure of his gaze, upper layers collapsing down on lower layers and being pressed away in turn until an entire broken hillock of stone was ground into a ramp whose surface was rippled like the seashore at low tide.

He closed his eyes and started walking, the ramp fixed firmly in his head.

 _Scott! Are you hurt?_ Emma’s mental voice was jittery with hope, relief, fear, her presence churning around him like surf surrounding a boulder. _Do you need help?_

 _I’m fine,_ he began, then smiled ruefully as the innumerable aches and pains he’d accumulated since his date in New York ended prematurely protested. _I’m mobile and safe enough, anyway. Can’t see a damn thing without leveling trees for a mile, but I can wait. You and the team safe? Jean?_   It was an effort to ask calmly, but not as much as he would have thought. He was even more emotionally exhausted than his body was.

She flowed around him, cool and calm at the surface. _I’m all right. Everyone else is still fighting. My dance partner bolted. I’m bringing your spare visor to you. Jean and Phoenix are...well._ She gave up on words and just let him see what she was seeing.

 _Der Teufel ist los sein._ Sometimes swearing in his mother’s native language was the only appropriate response. English just didn’t cut it. _Hurry._

* * *

Whether it was a separate mutation, a creative application of telekinesis, or something he’d done to himself in his lab, Essex healed quickly enough that Jean and Phoenix were going to have to find a different way to attack him. The injuries they inflicted by crushing him against the earth, pummeling him with wood or metal or stone, and suffocating him with their maelstrom all disappeared by the time they began a new attack.

 _From the outside is too slow,_ Jean thought. At least, a part of her mind that felt more like Jean than Phoenix thought it. She was more and less than herself, now, the twins different aspects of one thought. One being.

 _Fire,_ the part of her that was Phoenix thought/said. The air responded, swift as the command formed in their head, and Nathaniel Essex burned.

 _Painful but ineffective._ The thought was his, not theirs - cool and dark and unmoved, even in agony. _Are you prepared to be reasonable now?_

Their own thought was so simple and unambiguous, sharpened like a psychic sword, that any human or mutant they’d ever encountered would have obeyed on the spot. _Die._

Essex only hissed in vexation. _Unlikely. You are painfully prolonging an inevitable process. You are the vessel for the future - it is written in your blood and bone, in your chemistry. I will be witness to that future. Nothing you can do will stop it. I have been burned to bleached bone and rebuilt myself. It is simple biochemistry. Nothing I would expect a child to understand._

They hung in the sky, blazing while he burned, and considered the problem.

 _Chemistry,_ the part of her that was Jean suggested in Professor Xavier’s voice, _is molecular. Atoms are held together in molecules by chemical bonding: covalent and ionic, metallic, hydrogen. Electrostatic._

They smiled. Nathaniel Essex, for the first time, began to smell of fear. He started to form a thought - perhaps a bargain, an argument, a scream.

They had no interest in knowing what.

In principle, of course, they’d never moved something so small before. Or so numerous. It was like grains of sand on a beach if the beach was virtually infinite and the grains were infinitesimally small. But virtually infinite wasn’t infinite, and size was purely relative when force alone was your cutting implement.

Shearing the first water molecule into two hydrogens and an oxygen took the longest. Everything after that was easy - like unraveling a sweater, the difficult part was the first thread.

He might have had time to scream. They were too busy concentrating to notice.


	21. Chapter 21

Voices filtered through Alex’s mind as he regained consciousness. Men, women, maybe only one of each, maybe half a dozen people altogether. He couldn’t make out the words. There was a muffled roar of air and some kind of engine as a background noise. A truck, or a train maybe? Possibly an airplane. He’d never been on one to know for sure.

God, his head hurt. Had he been drinking again?

He opened his eyes a crack. A fall of green hair above him. Lorna. Next to her, the blue elf-demon-ninja guy. Shit. Not drinking.

Sitting up quickly made the room tilt and Alex’s head pound. He groaned.

“Easy.” Lorna’s arms were around him before he was all the way up, her cheek pressed tight enough against his that he was probably scraping her with the stubble he hadn’t had time to shave this morning. Not that he had any idea how much time had passed. Fuck. “Easy. You got your bell rung pretty hard, babe.”

“No fucking kidding,” he grumbled, hand to his head. He made it all the way to sitting, and was able to take in his surroundings.

He’d been lying on a row of seats right up against the back of the cargo bay. Lorna was strapped into the seat next to him, with the blue guy on her other side. Across from him....

“Fuck me.”

His goddamn brother and the diamond bitch were sitting _right there_ with Grey between them, the girl wrapped up in a bright red blanket that was pretty obviously the only thing she was wearing,  eyes closed and her head on Frost’s shoulder. It was sweet and confusing and he vaguely remembered Scott saying something about his ‘other girlfriend’ and god fucking dammit why did his brother have _two_ smoking hot girlfriends? Not that he was jealous. Or going to cheat on Lorna, and not just because she’d find a way to geld him with a butter knife. But, Christ, it wasn’t fair.

“Not in the plane, huh?” Scott said, looking up with a wry half-smile on his face that didn’t take the guarded look away for a second. “And don’t think about a round three. Seriously, don’t think about it. Emma’s not in a good mood.”

Alex closed his eyes. Scott was still sitting there when he opened them again. He looked at Lorna, opened his mouth to ask what the fuck was going on, and got run over before he had the chance.

“Chimera’s gone, Michael’s gone post-murder Lady Macbeth, Betsy’s dead weight and you were, well, out of it. I asked for, you know, a ride before the cops showed up and maybe a place to stay afterward and it was _really_ a lousy situation so if you could just not hate me, I’d really fucking appreciate it.” Lorna ran out of air and started reloading for a second round, but he managed to get his fingers over her mouth first. He liked the way she babbled when she was nervous in private, but they were both going to feel like shit if he let her keep doing it in front of these people.

Frowning in pain and the effort of pushing coherent thoughts through his brain - which wasn’t really working, and no matter what Scott said, Alex knew he wasn’t _this_ stupid, so he probably had a concussion - he took a breath. “What about Cal? Father?”

Lorna swallowed, looked apprehensively across at Grey, then shook her head.

He followed her gaze. The redhead looked about as waifish as it was humanly possible to look. Lorna wasn’t making sense.

“You mean Essex? They killed him,” the diamond woman said. Alex flinched. “Completely. Permanently. Painfully.” Her voice was cold with satisfaction.

Having his blood boil and stomach heave at the same time on top of the pain in his head, Alex had to grip the metal seat hard. Whether what he was keeping himself from doing was vomiting or blowing the plane apart around him, he wasn’t entirely sure, but neither was going to do any good right now.

Especially since it would start with Lorna.

“I don’t know about you, but the engines are bad enough for my head without conversation on top of it,” Scott said, and Alex hated the thread of understanding in his brother’s voice. It would have been more bearable if he didn’t want it so much.

“Fine,” Alex grunted, then turned away. Lorna wrapped her arms around his waist, then trembled against him in a way that made protective anger boil up inside him again. Violent emotion and nausea were definitely keeping company - he had to hold still and just breath for a few seconds before he was sure he was going to manage.

“Dislocations. They just hurt. I’m okay,” she whispered, tracing the bone of his cheek with her lips carefully. “I’m okay, Alex. Promise.”

Hand feather-light on her, he pressed a kiss onto her forehead and grunted in affirmation, even if he was still frowning. “This is all shitty and complicated, but I’d rather be here than in some flatscan cell. We’re gonna be okay,” he reassured.

“Yeah. They didn’t seem like they wanted to lock us up, and we’ve been in worse spots, right?” She leaned into him, careful of herself. “You and me, Alex. I’m so sorry about....” she trailed off, visibly stopping herself from shrugging.

On his part, he only barely managed to avoid shaking his head. “Later. Right now, you and me.”

“Yeah.” He felt the knot she must have been carrying around in her gut loosen, draining the tension out of her. Her voice slurred a little with fatigue. “What a fucking day.”

He snorted. “And how.”

* * *

 _For people who were helping that motherfucker,_ Phoenix thought, _they’re actually kinda cute._

 _He really did a number on them._ Jean sighed. _Like how the Xaviers found and taught us, but evil._

Emma’s arm tightened around their waist carefully, cool and hard and gem-like but still weirdly comforting (and comfortable). _If the Professor or her husband engaged in anything like the sort of long-term brainwashing Charles pulled out of the heads of our passengers, you are both aware that I’d simply have to kill them both?_

Inside, they smiled. Which of them it was doing the smiling was still hard to pick apart. It was definitely Jean who rolled her eyes, though.

 _I think it’s reassuring,_ Phoenix thought, loud enough for Emma to hear.

 _You think most violence is soothing, if it’s one of us who’s doing it,_ Jean pointed out. _Psycho._

_If it’s Scott, it’s just hot._

Jean blushed so hard it showed on their cheeks. The corner of Emma’s mouth turned up.  

_Maybe we should think about sex more. It seems to be helping untangle you two._

The Greys pulled the blanket tighter around themselves. _Not sex,_ Jean said, pain and revulsion seeping into her sister and Emma. _Preferably not violence either._ Her mind cast about for a topic. _Cars. Pizza. Home._

It was more fundamental that an embrace, the way they both wrapped around her - diamond and fire, no matter that Phoenix was more like glowing coals than a flame, Jean felt them like a shield on every side of her. Tears of relief stung their eyes, and Jean wondered how people managed to cope when they were alone inside their heads.

Then there was a new voice in her thoughts, familiar and careful in spite of the undercurrent of ache that came with it. _Dealership called a few days ago and said there’s a Firebird they think I might like. How about I take you for a ride tomorrow, Jeanie?_

She smiled. _I’d love to, but maybe we should wait until your concussion is healed, Scott._

Emma let go of the Greys long enough to find Scott’s hand and give it a gentle squeeze. He squeezed back, not quite as carefully, and smiled against the softness of their hair. _I was thinking I might let you drive for once._

An exhausted giggle escaped their lips. _Sure you can handle that? I’ve seen your backseat driving._

 _I’ll manage somehow._ His rueful amusement spilled through them like warm water. _Just don’t let Phoenix steer._

Phoenix’s protest was as wordlessly emphatic as it was surprisingly careful - like a thunderclap trying to be polite about itself. It set Emma off into a wave of silent laughter.

 _Laugh it up,_ Phoenix thought darkly. _The lock on your room won’t stop me from making you pay for this, Miss Frost._

 _One, I’m not scared of you. Two,_ she smiled, smoothing the Greys’ hair, _you couldn’t lift a penny right now, or, I suspect, for the next few days. You couldn’t even talk to Scott if I wasn’t patching you through._

Phoenix stirred, sparking, then settled in the back of their head with an exhausted glower. _Vengeance will be mine._

 _Somehow,_ Scott thought, richly masculine amusement lacing each word with intimate memory while his arms tightened reassuringly around them, _I imagine Emma will appease you later._

This time, Jean was sure that it was Phoenix who was blushing.

* * *

The hangar was underneath the south lawn, which was a perfectly sensible place to keep a supersonic VTOL jet, once you’d gotten over the ridiculousness of having a supersonic VTOL jet. However, both Charles and Erika had agreed that putting the lawn on retractable panels and taking off right from the school grounds was the exact opposite of sensible. Not only was it absurd from an engineering perspective, but keeping the association between the X-men and the Xavier School for the Gifted a secret while a mystery jet was rattling windows for miles on a weekly basis seemed exceedingly improbable.

John had been disappointed. Perhaps they shouldn’t have allowed so many James Bond films in the school.

Carving a launch tunnel through two miles of bedrock to the Titicus Reservoir would have been an incredibly expensive affair for most people, not to mention extremely difficult to keep secret. As it had turned out, once they got started on the business, the only things they really needed were a two week break from Scott’s studies and a great quantity of structural-grade steel. That and a very finely tuned autopilot on the Blackbird itself and some paint in camouflage colors for the door.

Charles waited by the door that led to the elevator. It had been less than two hours since the X-Men had departed looking for their compatriots, and he’d seen much through their eyes and the eyes of the human witnesses.

He wasn’t sure how the authorities were going to try to explain the destruction. It was too big for even Charles to cover up. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people had seen the firestorm. At least some of them had photographed it, and while he was strong enough to find and wipe the memory of every single one of them, he couldn’t do it fast enough to keep the news from spreading even further. It had been on television before Julio had helped him back into his chair. Hopefully, none of the humans had been able to see the figure of a mutant inside the flames - or if one had, he or she wasn’t talking to the press yet. He could imagine the witch-hunt that would follow such a revelation.

Even so, the public were now aware that _something_ dangerous and powerful and unstable was out there. Despite the fact that Scott and Erika had destroyed what little remained of Essex’s base, burying the body of the mutant called Caliban inside, there was still a chance that someone would find something. He didn’t like it that Chimera had disappeared, either, especially given how unstable she was.

It was only a matter of time before the public knew just how dangerous mutants could be. Stryker and men like him would put it to use for God only knew what purposes, all of them dangerous, and the likely reaction of the public was more than he could bear to consider at length. They needed time to educate, to build ties of brotherhood and community between mutants and humanity, and the temporary star over Kingstown was an omen that time was running short.

His brooding was interrupted by the distant sound of the tunnel doors opening, and Charles slipped on the sound-protection headset. And a few seconds later the Blackbird decelerated to a noisy, hovering landing in the hangar as the massive overhead fans hummed to life to drain away its exhaust.

The engines cut, and the telepath removed the earmuffs, rolling to the plane’s opening cargo bay. Thunderbird was the first to emerge, blood crusted on his nose and mouth, wincing as he tried not to jar the arm in a field splint.

“John. I’m glad to see you back.”

“Sir.” John’s warm bass was gravelly and oddly accented, and he reached up to touch his nose with his free hand before he remembered to stop himself. “Never broke anything before. Hurts like... ah... a lot.”

“I’m sure you’ll heal quickly, though perhaps it’s time to learn more about painkillers and your metabolism,” Charles suggested. “Carefully, of course.”

“My boy’s face better heal right, or I’m hunting down that bastard and finding a way to break _his_ damn arm,” Johanna announced as she picked her way down the stairs, gauntlets missing and hands carefully wrapped in gauze and tape. The wrapping on her ribs was hidden under her loosely-fastened armor, but Charles knew it was there because she thought about it every time she moved. “And the morphine the elf gave us didn’t do shit. Sir,” she added belatedly, a touch of embarrassment spilling through her shields.

“It’s good to see you safe as well, Johanna.” Charles smiled. “Though I’m sorry you’re both in pain. Go on upstairs. A meal and a rest will do you good.”

“Yeah.” Johanna wrapped a careful arm around her boyfriend and started for the elevator. “Come on, big chief. I could eat a cow - I mean a whole fucking cow, you know? Hooves, horns, tail...”

“Never thought I’d see anything dent either of them.” Heather’s armor was covered in scratches, some of them deep enough to separate the plating from the kevlar underneath, and her expression was as close to exhaustion as he’d ever seen it. She’d even walked up to him, visibly and slowly - no sudden appearances. From the look of her, she probably didn’t feel up to even her usual parlor tricks.

What she was feeling, though, she kept locked tight behind her shields.

Charles took her hand briefly, mind wrapping her in a warm and undemanding embrace. “You led well today, Heather. We’re all lucky to have you.”

“I killed someone I didn’t want to. Had what felt like all the time in the universe and I still couldn’t think of a way around it.” She squeezed his hand tightly, slowly released it, smiled - faint, full of sharp edges. “But I’ll live with it.” Then, as if really seeing him for the first time, she shook the moment off and managed a wider smile. “Just don’t think I’m going to make a habit of leading teams, Mister Xavier. Scott can keep the job as long as he wants it.”

Charles’ smile was a little sad. “We won’t ask it of you again except under great need.”

“Next Tuesday, then?” She softened the gallows humor with a chuckle and patted his shoulder before she moved on, falling in next to Kurt. The slight sixteen year old carried the unconscious telepath they’d brought back with them in spite of the periodic trembling and unsteadiness in his limbs, but when Heather tried to help him, Kurt shrugged her off. It made Charles more aware of the boy’s age than ever. The girl - Psylocke was the only name any of his own students seemed to have for her - was his responsibility as far as Kurt was concerned, and there was no talking him out of that. He was as adamant in his own quiet, nervous way as Erika could be when she chose to.

There were some curt voices above, and then Alex Summers and Lorna Dane came limping out side by side, pain and apprehension plain on their faces. Neither had any kind of mental shielding and Charles had to tighten his own to avoid being inundated in anger, fear, grief, a fierce love for one another, and, thankfully, hope.

“Hello Mister Summers, Miss Dane,” the telepath greeted them. “I’m Charles Xavier. Welcome to our home.”

Alex looked at him sourly. _Who the hell welcomes the people who kidnapped and beat on his friends? Lorna’s wrong on this one. He has to be trying to poison us or something. I can’t believe we’re staying with some rich flatscan cripple._

“Hi,” he said aloud.

Charles’ lips twitched. It was often amusing when people’s inner and outer voices were at such odds.

“Nice to meet you,” Lorna said quietly. _Oh, God, can we stop talking and go lie down already?_

Gesturing for them to follow, Charles turned the wheelchair back towards the door.

“If you’ll come with me, you can eat and bathe and get some rudimentary medical care. Our doctor - another mutant, if you were worried - is away at the moment, but he should be arriving this evening. He can treat any injuries that don’t require large hospital equipment.”

The steel corridor and elevator made Alex nervous, but it soothed Lorna. Charles wasn’t surprised. Erika tended to feel more grounded when surrounded by plenty of well-shaped metal.

“We can’t pay you back,” Alex said, back to the elevator wall. _We already owe them too much as it is._

“Considering how you got the injuries, I think we can call it fair. Even if it weren’t, you are aware that I’m filthy rich?” Charles smiled. Lorna was surprised into a laugh. Alex blinked rapidly, then had to hide a grin of his own. _Damn. He’s not supposed to be funny._

The doors opened onto the ground floor corridor, wood paneling and decorative vase setting off fresh waves of discomfort in Lorna and Alex - the transition from the bare efficiency of the underground to the stately reserve of the house and its softening layers of student decoration and occupancy was disorienting enough if one was expecting it. For the former Marauders, it was probably something like wandering into a Caroll book. Juilo was leaning against the wall, the waves of his fine, dark hair making Charles as envious as they always did. Sometimes he was almost convinced he missed his hair more than the use of his legs.

He put the thought away before either pain could start spreading to his visitors.

“Here you are,” Charles said. “This is Julio Rictor, one of our teachers. He’ll take you wherever you need to go. I’m going back down. We’ll speak again at dinner.” He pressed the button and left the two dazed young people who he could already tell were going to need a great deal of work.

It was bittersweet, finding Scott’s brother after all this time. At least now he knew why he hadn’t been able to find Alex with Cerebro.

“Dad,” Scott said the moment the doors opened, “would you mind not riding up with us?”

He looked, in a word, terrible - pale, bruised, more than a little unsteady on his feet and wincing in a way that suggested he was probably concussed (again). He was also as completely serious as he’d ever been in the decade since they’d brought him home.

Charles glanced at Emma, who was still glittering like the chandelier in the foyer, arm protectively around the Greys. They, for their part, looked merely exhausted without telepathic perception. To Charles, they were a tangled mess of pain and weariness, their psychic energies flickering alarmingly weakly. He was just glad they weren’t as bad off as the catatonic ‘Psylocke.’

All in all, they were four people who desperately wanted to collapse alone together.

Smiling softly, Charles vacated the elevator, but not without gripping Scott’s forearm. He’d rather have crushed his foster son in his arms, but tugging him and his poor beaten brain down seemed unwise.

“I couldn’t bear it if we’d lost you, Scott.” His voice shook a little with the depth of his feeling. “I almost couldn’t bear it for the last twelve hours. Any of you,” he added, directed towards the Greys. “If I had it my way you’d never leave the house again, but I suppose I can allow an unsupervised elevator ride.”

“Mister Xavier,” Phoenix said as she reached out and pressed the button to seal the doors, “you couldn’t stop us if you tried.”

Charles sighed as they disappeared.

“Truer words, husband.” Invisible behind the shield of her helmet, he hadn’t heard Erika’s approach, but now that her hand was resting against the back of the chair she reached up and drew the infernal thing off with a twist of her fingers.

He was not sure he had ever seen her look so pale and bone weary, either.

Turning the chair to avoid craning his neck, Charles rested his hand on her armored forearm. “It was a joke,” he complained, his light tone at odds with the intensity of his eyes drinking in the sight of her face. Caressing her mind with his, he sagged with relief when she let him in and he could twine himself in her very essence, bringing them both a familiar, deep, unique comfort.

_Oh, my love. What lives we’ve thrown ourselves and our children into._

"The lives required of us, Charles." Her bittersweet regret and pride ached in his chest. "Of all of us. They were breathtaking today. Astonishing."

“Yes,” he agreed, seeing them all in her memories - not just Jean and Phoenix’s display of godlike power and radiance. John and Johanna fighting as fiercely as always despite being physically threatened for the first time since they’d manifested their gifts. Kurt moving around the field in bursts of smoke, body as graceful as any acrobat’s, swords blocking his opponents’, careful to avoid deadly strikes even as he deflected such. Heather flickering all over, warning her teammates, spreading intelligence, and finally shooting the pale, fear-inducing mutant in the head when he came too close to striking Erika. Emma holding her own against the woman with the dragons, then bringing Scott his visor. Scott himself, trudging blindly out of the rubble carrying the brother who’d helped take him captive.

Erika, throwing a farm’s worth of metal at Lorna. Bands of re-purposed sheet metal pulling the girl’s arms - and one of her legs - out of their sockets, then carefully re-locating the limbs and laying her on the grass once she’d passed out from pain.

“The girl is a fighter,” she murmured, resting her armored fingertips against his face. “If she stays, she’ll be an asset.”

He leaned into the cool touch. “And you’ll have someone to pass your skills to,” he smiled. “Alex has potential, too, although more pig-headed than his lady-love.”

“Not unlike a certain boy we used to know.” Her lips quirked up, and fond memory chased some of the lines from her face. “Whatever storms may come, _mein lieber Mann_ , they will find us ready for them.”

“I know,” he said quietly. She could see his fears of their people and home being attacked. Then he smiled again. “Though I do hope it’s without more holes in our walls. I wonder if our favorite contractor is still working?”

“With a little good fortune, the brothers will restrain themselves.” She gently took her hand from his, then began to walk to the elevator with his chair following behind her like an obedient spaniel. The faint, maternal smile of amusement on her face made a strange contrast with Magneto’s armor. “It still wakes me in the night as well, Charles, more often than I would like.”

The doors closed.

“How do you calm yourself when that happens?” The knowledge that she could wake him for comfort was unspoken and sure as the bedrock beneath Westchester, but he knew too well how rarely she did.

Her smile was as hard as the metal she wore, but there was warmth in her eyes that kept it from frightening him. “I feel a profound pity for any fool who comes to our school looking for trouble.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Washington, DC -  November 7th, 1973**

Rose Mary Woods was not quite sixty years old, had seen everything there was to see in Washington, and was not easily impressed. The President relied on her, and she thought nothing of making Cabinet secretaries and generals wait their turn in the small reception area outside the Oval Office.

She had always impressed William Stryker as a woman it was best not to make an enemy of, and so he exchanged polite smiles with her and seated himself neatly in one of the chairs near the door when what he wanted to do was pace, shout, demand to be admitted.

To do absolutely anything but sit and think about the meticulously assembled debriefing files that were waiting for his signature in his office, the files which could not have more completely proclaimed the failure of the Weapon X program if he had designed them for that purpose.

He tried, vainly, to stop himself from itemizing the completeness of the disaster.

Two of his best and most useful assets - as well as a selection of operators that would not be easy to replace in the units from which he had borrowed them - telepathically compromised and useless. Wraith had quite literally vanished into thin air, Zero couldn’t bring himself to touch a firearm without being physically ill, and every one of the survivors of the failed kidnapping attempt who’d actually been present when the Xaviers had been taken from them broke - at frequent intervals and without warning - into that damned children’s song.

His efforts at breaking the Xavier’s underground network had failed. He could still martyr them, but the chances of him ever coming as close to having them in his hands again were nonexistent.

The telepathic capabilities of the X-men, which he had long suspected, were immeasurably greater than he had believed. The telepath MI-6 had provided him was missing without a trace, or so they said. The scientist who’d provided the breakthrough on telepathic jamming - Essex - had vanished, the key parts of his research lost with him, and his small production facility would struggle to be sure of their work without the designer or their chief test subject available.

Assuming the jammers were still viable for personal use; the post-mortem of the devices that had failed to protect his men indicated some form of power surge that ruptured the batteries. Without Essex for analysis and improvement, the devices were shields that might prove potential bombs against a telepath of sufficient power.

He made himself take a deep breath, hold it, let it go. Then again.

The Xaviers and their damned X-men had proved the weaknesses of Weapon X. In doing so, they had - unwittingly - assisted him. He could begin again with a clear idea of what he was facing, prepare for the threat that even he had underestimated. They had won a battle. He would prepare for the war.

He still had assets: the Widow, the Wolverine, his own Deathstrike. The research and development facilities he’d seeded across the country. Funding. Authority. The trust of his government.

All of those things, and one more that mattered most: the pictures in his briefcase and the debriefing of a gentleman from Chestertown, Maryland who had been bird watching with his son from the roof of his home when a fountain of fire had sprung up in the sky across the Chester River. Perhaps it was that hobby which had led him to describe the flames as ‘shaped like a giant falcon’ to Natalia, but it had also led to the photographs he’d taken with his Nikon’s exquisite long distance lens

For Stryker and his program, those photographs - and the ones from the Corps of Engineers survey of what had once been a wooded hill outside Kingstown - were a godsend. A blank check.

“The President will see you now, Colonel Stryker,” Miss Woods told him, and he collected his briefcase as he stood. Smiled, politely. “Thank you, ma’am.”

He went in. The President was behind his desk, Kissinger and Schlesinger already sitting on the couches with notepads at hand. Other than the Secret Service, they were alone.

“Mister President,” he began without preamble, “three days ago, at approximately five-thirty in the morning, an unknown mutant manifested her powers outside Kingstown, Maryland. My analysts have codenamed this incident Firebird, and prepared the following briefing documents for your consideration....”


	23. Chapter 23

**Westchester - March 1st, 1974**

Usually, late winter saw the main garden of the Xavier School covered in strata of ice-crusted snow, a shoveled and salted pathway winding from a back door to the unofficial ‘Snow War’ field on the far side. Students played outside when there was snow fit to shape into projectiles or sculptures, but otherwise stayed inside. That had been a problem during the first winter of official schooling, but Charles and Erika had quickly provided a number of indoor leisure pursuits and the space to do them in, lest there be a repetition of the excruciating cabin fever and Great Rebuilding of ‘65.

However, today the Greys were in the center of a circle of dried mud near the dormant roses staring morosely into the distance. Emma hadn’t seen the ornamental bench they sat on in months. She’d come to the balcony after she’d caught a glimpse of the flare of orange light outside and stayed to watch the girls after they’d stopped flaming.

“Everyone else is inside with the news. The grand jury’s gone ahead with the indictments. The White House isn’t saying much they haven’t already. Nothing new from Egypt or the Holy Land.” Cradling two mugs of steaming coffee in his gloved hands, Scott stepped out into the evening chill. She’d felt him coming, but that wasn’t why it was so easy to reach out and take one of the mugs without turning around.

Scott Summers had brought her a lot of coffee in the last four months.

“Thank you.” Her flesh-and-bone fingers drank the heat of the mug greedily through her own gloves. Either she’d been out there longer than she’d thought, or it was just that cold. “No new oppressive laws or acts of anti-mutant violence? Why, that’s been almost a whole week.”

“Hah,” Scott enunciated dryly, without any particular humor. “I think people are a little busy worrying about whether the President’s going to resign or be impeached to care much about us.”

The coffee was strong and hot and just a little sweet. Perfect. “Mm. I hope you’re right. This trial is going to drag for months, at least.” Her breath rose into the air in white clouds, as did Scott’s. His arm slid around her waist, hand settling at her hip.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he murmured, barely more than a breath. “Maybe a lot worse.”

He didn’t, she knew without having to ask or touch his mind, mean the potential fall of a President of the United States.

“Yes.” She kept her fears inside her shields, though she’d shared them with Scott before. Many were identical to his: oppression, imprisonment, bereavement, death. Losing their students, one way or another. They didn’t need to wallow in them now. “I’m glad I’m facing it here,” she told him, smiling slightly, “and not wasting my talents on bar fights.”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” he said, and then laughed as he tucked his face against her hair. “You probably already know that, but thanks for not spoiling the moment by saying so before now. The Professor wants me to take over field command for the X-men - not just when she’s not available, but all the time. I said I’d think about it, but I meant I would as long as I had the right person to back me up. The right second.”

It wasn’t a surprise, exactly. Magneto had been giving Cyclops more and more latitude in mission planning, field command, and team cohesion. The X-Men and Xavier Foundation both had had a very busy January. The Firebird Incident had spawned a host of media outcry and urban legends. Once the nation had forgotten the Christmas spirit and been subjected to the long, frigid, dreary part of winter that made everyone miserable, those had grown into civic-minded bigotry and outright violence. The rescues, the riots, the attacks on hate groups - they’d worn the team down and forged them into a stronger, smarter, faster unit. All of them were better fighters than they had been, and all of them had a familiar place in the group. Scott’s promotion would be both the logical conclusion of that fact and a disruption to it. So would Emma’s.

The unit would get over it.

Emma raised an eyebrow. “I won’t stop telling you when you’re being an idiot.”

Scott’s smile brushed her temple as he kissed it.  “Miss Frost, I would be disappointed if you did. That, and I’d check to make sure someone hadn’t replaced you with a shapeshifter.”

“It wouldn’t take very long,” she smirked. “A shapeshifter couldn’t do this.”

Projecting sensation into someone’s mind was more difficult than images, but she’d had plenty of practice since coming to Xaviers’ school and, more to the point, gotten into teasing contests with Phoenix.

At the moment, Scott was feeling her hands slide down the bare skin of his chest down to his stomach. She watched him flush over another sip of coffee.

“There is that.” He bent down and kissed her warmly, squeezing her against him, and then eased back a step with a faint smile. “We have an audience.”

 _Are you two going to make out up there all night?_ Phoenix’s thoughts spilled over them both on a flood of silent laughter. Humor hadn’t come back easily for Phoenix after Kingstown, and when it had in the last few months it’d too often had a cruel edge to it. Not tonight.

Emma smiled. _I was just about to pull him inside. What about you two?_

The Greys lifted into the air, coat and skirt swirling around their boots, and perched lightly on the rail of the balcony with their gloved hands just touching the edge. It was telekinesis that held them comfortably where they were, not any natural agility, but the position gave them the same graceful balance Kurt always seemed to have when he hung from the banisters or the chandeliers. Cold and effort had drained color from their already pale skin, and in the dim light spilling from the lamps inside the effect was almost ghostly.

“We’d like to come along.” The words were soft, just a little bit tentative, but through the shield of the twins’ joined minds it was impossible to tell which of them had spoken. Maybe both together.

Emma’s heart lightened as she glanced hopefully at Scott. Someone who didn’t know him as well as she did might not have recognized the immensity of the relief packed into that small smile. It lifted another weight from Emma, almost as much as seeing the Greys branching out from the pattern of the last few months: Phoenix taking comfort in Emma’s bed, Jean clinging to them both afterwards, Phoenix fuming at Scott except for the two times she’d found comfort in his arms, too. They were all healing.

Emma held out an open hand. “Of course.”

The Greys took it and then, slowly, reached out for Scott as well. He stepped in and put his arm around them, the same way he’d put it around Emma a few moments before, and tucked the redhead against his shoulder in a way that was viscerally, wordlessly comforting - the same half-embrace he’d given Jean briefly after every one of their dozen or so weekly dates since Kingstown.

This time, he didn’t let go after a moment or two. The Greys stayed where they were, leaning into him, hand wrapped tight with Emma’s.

“Scott’s bed has enough room,” Jean thought and said at the same time, “and the fireplace.”

One of Scott’s hands adjusted his glasses carefully as he looked over at Emma. The other tightened against the Greys’ hip. She didn’t need telepathic contact to know he wanted her approval for what they were all apparently thinking.

_Jean?_

The girl looked at her almost shyly. _I want...to be with you. All of you. Maybe just watch, or...I don’t know. But I do know I want you there._

Emma blinked, an odd tightness in her throat. It was a little heartbreaking that Jean wasn’t the same girl who’d gone on that first date with Scott. But her trust in Emma was a gift that felt almost too big to cope with.

“Yes.”

Scott’s smile was quiet, bittersweet but still so bright with happiness that it almost hurt to look at, and they went in together in spite of the tight fit through the door because neither Emma nor Scot was willing to let go of the girls between them for even a single moment.

 _If tomorrow knows what’s good for it,_ Scott Summers thought just a little too loudly to himself, _it’ll stay out of our way._

* * *

“There are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March on Detroit, Detroit, Michigan, 1963

 


End file.
